The Myth of Distance
by treneka
Summary: A tragedy leads to the reunion of a pair who thought they'd grown apart...although it's going to take a while. This story includes a bit of mystery, a dash of angst, some explosions and some insanity.
1. Default Chapter

a/n: first fanfiction. Constructive criticism greatly appreciated. This is set in Kaname's second year of college, and based off of the anime and issue 4 of the US translation of the manga (all I have access to at the moment).

disclaimer: I don't own Full Metal Panic or any of its characters; they belong to Shouji Gatou, Retsu Tateo, ADV, et cetera.

Chapter 1.

_  
The distance between point A and point B is only as wide as the viewer is close. Stand far enough away, and worlds collide..._

"KANAME! NOOOOOO!" Tessa woke up screaming in her cabin. Sweat covered her face and blood ran from cuts in her arms where her own fingernails had gouged a trail. Breathing deeply, and trying desperately to calm down, the young captain activated her reading light and reached for her slippers. Her heart was still thudding in her chest as she crossed the room to her small lavatory, turned on the cold faucet and splashed cool water over her face. "Keep it together, Tessa. You've got to calm down. I'm sure it was just a dream." She wiped her face with a soft washcloth before giving herself what should have been a reassuring glance in the mirror. It wasn't. Colors flowed before her eyes and the world seemed to dissolve into shifting numbers and words. "CALM DOWN, CAPTAIN! THAT'S AN ORDER!" But even as the dull greys and greens of the real world seeped back into focus, she heard an echo of her dream. _Help me..._ "Dammit." She blushed slightly at her own profanity as reality reasserted itself. "It was just a dream. I'm sure it was nothing."

She fumbled a plastic bottle of antiseptic from her medicine cabinet, thanking her foresight in stocking one against her frequent tumbles and slips. Giving up on trying to balance the bottle on the sink, she sat on the floor to dab at her scratches. Images of blood dripping on a keyboard flashed before her eyes. "No. The dream is over." A sudden, overwhelming sense of fear and sadness lanced into her brain, before disappearing. There was no mistaking that. Taking a deep breath and willing her voice to calmness, Tessa re-capped the antiseptic bottle, taped a bandage over the last of her scratches, and reached for her comm unit. "Lt. Commander Kalinin, come in please."

"Lt. Commander Kalinin reporting, Madame-captain. How may I be of assistance?"

"Please assemble whatever information we have on the current status and whereabouts of Kaname Chidori and bring it to my quarters immediately." There was a slight pause on the other end of the channel.

"Aye, Captain. Right away. Kalinin out."

------------------------------------

To say that the lab had been demolished would not be putting it too strongly. Joel Vermeer was the first in that morning, tray of coffees in one hand, sack of bagels in the other. A satchel of notes from last night was slung over one shoulder and the lab keys were clenched firmly in his teeth. He was still operating in a semi-conscious state of auto-pilot when something registered incorrectly in his brain. When had the door been moved to that end of the hallway??

He flipped on the main hall lights, then flipped the switch a few more times. Dead. Even so, the faint light of dawn was beginning to filter through the skylights into the hall. Broken glass and ash sparkled and smudged all around. _Oh my g---!_ Bagels and coffee fell to the ground. There was a faint, repetitive noise from the interior of the lab.

"Yoshi? YOSHI!!" Joel yelled, stumbling into the dark interior of the physics lab. Inside, shapes loomed in anything but their familiar pattern. Desks and worktables were overturned. Twisted bits of blackened metal and warped plastic littered the ground. Part of a white board nearly obscured the door, and oddly enough, rose petals bruised beneath his feet. Realizing that there were power sources in this room which could potentially still be loose, Joel backtracked to the hallway to grab the emergency flashlight. He thumbed it on, then began picking his way cautiously, but quickly into the room. "Yoshi, are you in here?!" Thud, thud, thud. Then a murmuring. "Yoshi, holler if you can hear me!" Thud, murmur, thud.

Shoving the remains of a magnetic field generator aside, Joel stopped to stare in horror. The containment room where Yoshi Chikitaka had been working on his thesis was completely charred. The facing wall no longer existed and the control room and generators were so much tangled wire and mangled steel. Only three things remained: the project, a body on the floor, and... "Kaname?"

That Chikitaka's girlfriend was here was not all that unusual. She and Yoshi had been known to hole up in the lab for hours at a time, for all that her major (at least to Joel's knowledge) had nothing to do with physics, robotics, or dimensional research. There had been a lot of joking about what sort of muse the beautiful coed acted as. What was strange, no, horrifying, was the way she sat with her legs folded beneath her, leaning against the wall, staring at the body and rocking back and forth. Every now and then, her head would hit the wall, and she would mumble to herself. And the body...

It could only be Chikitaka-san. He was lying on his back, one foot missing, one arm and both legs twisted at sickening angles. Blood spattered all around, but strangely, no sign of charring on his exposed flesh or the anterior of his clothing. As for the back, Joel could smell the damage from where he stood.

"pinpointsingularitygenerationcriticalangleachieved..." thud. Thud. "physicaltolerance exceededcontainmentratioimplosionimmanent..." thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

"Kaname? Kaname, look at me." She didn't seem to notice his presence at all. "Kaname, what happened? I've got to call emergency services here. Please come with me." No response. "Kaname," he crouched down and grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to look at him, "WE HAVE TO CALL HELP." For one moment, her eyes seemed to see him. She paused in her rocking, stared at the lab assistant with a curious intensity.

"_Help me._ I killed him—OOOOOOOH!" her moan became a blood-curdling scream. Wrenching herself from his grasp, the young woman screamed again and again, each howl sounding as though it would rip her lungs from her chest. Joel toppled away from her in sudden confusion.

"I have to call help. I'll be RIGHT BACK!" Tripping and crawling, the lab assistant ran back out through the lab into the hallway. His cell phone was out of the satchel and the emergency services number dialed almost before he registered arriving in the hallway. "Hello?... we've had a major catastrophe in lab 005..." images of explosions and the tortured lab bombarded his mind, "one dead, one injured, I think..." hadn't the three of them just been sitting together smiling at lunch yesterday? "I can't tell, but I didn't see any bleeding and she's conscious... no, I don't think I could get her to tell me, she's not exactly all here... what? Okay, I'll try. Five minutes? Okay, I'll leave this line open."

Walking back into the lab, the assistant heard that Kaname had resumed her mumbling. He described her condition to the man on the phone, and then listened as instructions were relayed. Arriving back in that horrible non-room, he sat between the girl and her dead friend, and gently as he could, held her head away from the wall. The warm, brown eyes that had always been so full of life stared blindly through him. The mouth that should have been smiling or yelling murmured nonsense. "Oh, Yoshi, what the hell happened here?" and finally, Joel allowed himself to cry.

------------------------------

MITHRIL's information regarding Chidori was annoyingly incomplete, but the initial data did not seem to indicate anything particularly unusual. Naturally, surveillance had been significantly relaxed as the threat was judged to have become minimal. Chidori's time at the university was generally monitored once or twice a month, more to keep tabs than anything else, but the last report was almost a month old.

"Subject performing above average academically. Outstanding performance in intramural sports. Still no major determined. Participation in social activities has declined somewhat in the past four months, suspect due to possible boyfriend: Yoshi Chikitaka. Otherwise, contacts normal. No further target behavior exhibited." There were some further comments, equally vague and unimportant. Tessa requested the operative on site to post an updated report as soon as possible.

"May I ask as to the reason for your sudden interest in Miss Chidori, Madame-captain?" Kalinin stood beside her chair in the control room.

"I just wondered how she was doing. She hasn't tried contacting us for over two years now, and I was curious. I was remembering that time she came aboard for the party." Tessa smiled brightly with a hint of nostalgia that almost hid the deep concern in her eyes. Kalinin had been observing his superior officer for too long to buy it, however. Even so, his was not to question, etc.

"I see."

They stared at the forward displays in silence for several minutes, before the captain spoke again. Her voice seemed just a hint too light-hearted.

"I wonder if any of the others have heard from her lately?" Under ordinary circumstances, Kalinin would have wondered whether the Captain's curiosity were focused on a certain sergeant and more self-serving than genuinely interested. Something in her voice suggested otherwise, however.

"I do not believe so, ma'am, but I will inquire, if you like."

"Thank you, Commander. I'm afraid they might question my motives if I were to attempt it." Ah, so she was growing. Then why was she so concerned?

----------------------------------------

They were sitting in the garden, after a run. He'd given her a good chase and they were both pleasantly worn out.

"The real problem is one of distance, you know? I guess I should have given up on this guy a long time ago, simply because that damn distance is always there, and probably always will be, but some tiny little part of my mind won't give him up. Pretty dumb, huh?" She stretched her shoulders and lay back on the grass. "I don't think he ever even realized how much I cared about him. Stupid otaku. Did I mention he was a military freak?"

He smiled and reclined on one elbow beside her. "You may have mentioned it once or twice." Plucking a dandelion from the green, he tickled her chin, and she laughed, then tickled him back with devilish skill. When exhaustion once again imposed a truce, she stared at the sky, a remote look in her eyes. He lay back and stared with her. "Penny for them?"

"What?"

"Your thoughts. I'll give you a penny for them."

"They're not even worth that. Can you believe sometimes I still can't sleep because of him. I think about him and I get so mad. Then I get so sad, and... you know."

"Maybe you just don't have the right pillow."

"Hmm?" she turned to look at him and he shifted closer to her, easing his arm beneath her neck. "Oh."

"Distances are all relative, you know. From a quantum mechanical standpoint, no two things can ever truly touch, or at least not without blurring the line of individuality. Still, broaden your perspective enough, and the distance between particles," he raised a finger an inch or two above her nose, "doesn't exist." She heard him chuckle as he tapped the tip of her nose.

...warningpsifieldingress...survivalprobabilitywithinfield0.003%...

"Yoshi...**YOSHI**!!!!"

---------------------------------

"A situation has arisen." Kalinin brought up a photograph on the board room screen. Only Weber, Mao and Sagara were in attendance for the briefing, but the commander's demeanor suggested that the matter at hand was neither simple, nor routine. The object of the photo appeared to be an arm slave, but...

"It's so small!" Kurz couldn't help but remark. "It's more like an armored suit than anything. Why would anybody build such a worthless little AS?" Mao elbowed him sharply in the rib cage as the commander continued.

"This AS, for lack of a better term, was apparently invented on the campus of Tokyo University by a graduate student. No specifications or blueprints can be located to elaborate as to its purpose or possible functionality, however, there are issues regarding its construction which suggest that it would be highly advantageous and possibly essential that MITHRIL retrieve this prototype."

"Is the University willing to part with it, or should we expect to have to take it by stealth?" Sousuke was as direct as ever. "Further, it seems to me that retention of the creator would be invaluable, given the lack of systems diagrams. Should we plan to persuade this individual to accompany us?"

"Wait a minute, first things first: how are we supposed to retrieve this thing if we don't really know what it is? Has anybody thought of asking this guy for his notes? I mean, if it's a student project, there's got to be a report or a paper or a thesis or something all about it right? And besides, why should MITHRIL care? University kids are always coming up with weapons technology advances. Why aren't we just waiting for the trade reports on this one?" Kurz stared at Kalinin, and Mao seriously considered another elbow, but he did have something of a point.

"What, precisely, is our mission objective here, sir, and has a risk analysis been performed?"

"Your mission is to retrieve this object and to acquire any additional information regarding its construction that you can. At present, the University is offering its full cooperation in removal efforts, provided that MITHRIL will rebuild their laboratory. As for possible dangers, there are two points of note. First of all, the device's creator died in the laboratory under suspicious circumstances over a week ago. No backup paperwork has been recovered from either the lab or his domicile. Secondly, it is assumed at present that the device was created with the assistance of a Whispered, and that it may contain previously unknown black technology."

"WHAT?" Eyes widened around the table.

"Kaname?" Melissa was the first to say what they were all thinking.

"The creator was a man by the name of Yoshi Chikitaka. His Lab Assistant, a Mr. Joel Vermeer, has been detained for questioning. Miss Chidori is believed to have been—close friends with Mr. Chikitaka, and was likely present at the time of the incident or very shortly thereafter. Whether she was an active collaborator on the project is unknown, but it is better to assume so."

"Why don't we just ask her?" Weber wasn't quite observant enough to catch the Commander's implication but Sergeant Mao's heel on his instep was clear enough. "Or not!"

Sousuke observed the exchange with some perplexity

"I am in agreement with Sergeant Weber, sir. Although Miss Chidori would seem to have little fondness for our organization, I do not think that her antipathy towards us is of such a degree as to prevent her from assisting us in this." Then again, part of his mind was quick to suggest all sorts of reasons that her antipathy (or sheer stubbornness) might be more than adequate to prevent her from supplying any information.

Kalinin took a deep breath. "Miss Chidori is currently under observation in a mental health facility. Her reported behavior does not suggest sufficient lucidity to provide answers with any value. However, a secondary objective of the mission will be to bring the young lady to a MITHRIL facility for further study. Our Whispered specialists may be able to help her, or, barring that, may succeed in retrieving any data she might have with regards to the project."

"What the hell happened to her?" Under any ordinary circumstances, speaking in unison would have occasioned some irritation from Weber or Mao if not both, however on this matter, it was clear that concern for their one-time friend overrode that.

"That is one of the things you will need to find out. As former friends, you may have better success than our investigator. Any further questions?"

"Just one, sir. Has anybody _else_ shown interest in this thing?"

"Not yet. If we act quickly, we may be able to avoid _outside_ _competitors_ for the object. Good luck. You will deploy in three hours. Anything else?" Kalinin glanced in Sagara's direction, but the young sergeant seemed focused elsewhere. "Very well. Dismissed."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2._  
  
When focus on the goal is lost, obstacles may begin to seem insurmountable. _

Sitting in the hangar as the last of the gear was loaded onto their transport, Sousuke tried to organize his thoughts regarding the mission, its objectives and probable challenges. He considered methods of disguising the strange AS for transport, and wondered if Kaname had chosen the robot's paint colors. He thought of pertinent questions to put to the Lab Assistant and his mind wandered to impertinent questions he would like to put to a certain blue-haired young woman... if she were at all capable of answering them. A strange queasiness rippled through him as he wondered briefly just how she was. In his mind, he could not picture her as anything other than the boisterous, lively, energetic (well, honestly, violent), optimistic and generally cheerful girl he had known. Even so, he had witnessed enough cases of battle fatigue and post traumatic stress disorder to know that harsh circumstances could change a person in almost unimaginable ways. But Kaname?

Then again, what reason did he have to think he would know her even if circumstances were normal? Two years could change a great deal about a person. It had been two years since their last communication. "I just can't take this anymore! You've been a good friend, when you weren't completely screwing up my life, and I would love to see you again, but until then I need to get on with my life. I can't just wait forever. There's more to love than waiting by a phone for a clueless idiot who seems to think that quoting the "Art of War" is all it takes to maintain a relationship. Do you understand?"

He hadn't understood. There was something in her voice over the line that seemed to want an answer beyond "affirmative," but he didn't know what. He did sense a strange finality in her words and her tone, but it wasn't until he had voiced his reply and ended transmission that the chill feeling of termination touched his heart. It would take over a month of answering machines and empty mailboxes to drive home to him what he had lost.

"I would love to see you again..." Would she really? Or would she really have wanted to see him again before this happened. There had been missions and objectives, training and research: a myriad of things to keep him occupied and tied to the organization. A month had lead to six, to a year, and although he thought about her constantly, he never quite took the extra step of requesting leave, or an assignment in her proximity. What if she hadn't meant it? Something else had always seemed more important, higher priority, until now. And now, there was a good chance it was too late.

"How're you holding up?" Kurz plopped down beside him on a pile of gear. "Had enough time to get your mind tied up in little bitty knots yet?" Sousuke turned to look at him in consternation. He'd thought himself less obvious than that. Kurz simply shook his head and blew his bangs out of his eyes. "Guess so. You know, it could be worse."

"True. If an incident of the proportions indicated by the blast radius had occurred during peak lab occupation hours, the casualty rate could have been much higher." Sousuke avoided the issue.

"She could be dead. I don't know exactly what the situation was between you, but I know there's stuff you needed to deal with. We're going to see her again, and no matter what kind of vegetable she may turn out to be, at least she's alive." He glanced away. "Where there's life, there's hope." He smirked, watching Melissa head in their direction. "And if that doesn't work out, there's always friends and beer."

---------------------------------

"Yoshi? What time is it?" She woke up in a chair in Yoshi's control room. He'd asked her to come pick him up for dinner, and then asked her to wait a couple minutes while he finished something up... and then a couple more... and then, "How long have I been here?" The outer lab looked completely dark and no one else was around. The control room timer said 03:26, but that could mean anything, since Yoshi often reset it for various experiments. A voice-activated tape recorder whirred quietly on the table in front of her. Strange. She stood up, straightened her skirt and blouse, and pushed open the door to the containment room, noting that the warning light was currently green. The lab clock read 03:27. Components which had been neatly arrayed when she arrived were scattered in seemingly haphazard fashion all over the floor. Papers with Yoshi's terrible handwriting, and hasty-looking sketches were taped up all over the room and Yoshi himself was buried down to the knees in his project, his feet tapping excitedly on the floor while bangs and skreeches filtered through the machine.

"YOSHI! YOU IDIOT, I HAVE A 7:30 CLASS TOMORROW!"

"Wha?" was as far as he got before being pulled forcibly by the feet from the machine. "K-Kaname??" His expression flowed from joy to chagrin as he registered the glaring menace in her eyes. He looked up at the clock. "Oh! I am so sorry. I am so soooo sorry!" but suddenly he smiled. "But, you may have just helped me solve your problem."

It was her turn to stammer. "W-what do you mean?"

"The distance, K-chan! I think you may have hit the nail on the head with that psi-field generator stuff, and if we can just find a way to contain the singularity then the distance is no longer a problem!" He leaped up from the floor and hugged her. His enthusiasm was contagious, but she wouldn't let herself be won over quite so easily.

"First, I don't know what the HELL you're talking about, and Second—and listen up because this is important—if I am embarrassed in class today because of you, I swear I'm never coming here again!"

"But you--" he paused, confusion evident, then the more familiar calm patience suffused his features. "Kaname, do you recognize this?" he held out a very large sheet of paper covered with detailed schematics. It looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn't say how. The notes on it, though...

"That's my handwriting! But I don't remember..." suddenly, it dawned on her and she stared, panic-stricken, at her friend. "I did this, didn't I?"

"_We_ did it. I was working on the schematics and we were talking about distances and your friend and all of a sudden, you started mumbling these fantastic ideas, and I gave you a pen, and you started writing, and I nailed down the details when you were too vague, and it's crazy and the laws of physics say there's no way in hell it should work, but it just might," he took her face in his hands and smiled into her eyes. "You and I are going to warp the laws of time and space." Then he looked closely at her, and registered her nervousness and concern. "Are you alright, Kaname-chan? I'm not crazy. I'm really not. And if I can make this work, you could see your friend whenever you wanted to whether he's in Japan or Timbuktu..."

"I'm okay, Yoshi-chan. And I know you're not crazy. Just promise me you'll keep this absolutely secret, okay? Not to sound too paranoid, but our lives may depend on it." The image of someone else saying those words was hauntingly clear for a moment.

"Lives nothing! My future in the academic community hangs in the balance." He smiled. "But I promise," he kissed her gently on the forehead, "I will not tell another living soul, and no one will find a single one of my notes, until you say it's okay."

------------------------------------

"Okay..."

"What? Do you like that one Kaname?" Kyoko and Joel were sitting with her in a sunny room, showing her old photographs of high-school and college. Images of friends and parties and summer trips covered the little table in front of them, and part of the tatami beneath. The latest picture was of Kaname sitting on a bench with Bonta-kun at a local carnival. "Do you want your doll? I'll have the nurse bring it from the room...?" For a moment, something seemed to hit home in Kaname's expression, but the moment passed and her gaze resumed its unfocused perusal of the pictures. Kyoko sighed. She had been here for over three hours today, and the tears were threatening to come back with a vengeance. That her once dynamic friend could be reduced to this seemed unspeakably unfair. Still, at least Kaname was no longer trying to injure herself, or murmuring those strange nonsense words. Whether that was due to her friends' presence or to the sedatives, Kyoko wasn't sure. She hoped the former.

"How about this one, Kaname?" she held up an old photo of her friend in the act of launching Sousuke across a hallway with a well-placed smack of her halisen. If that didn't get a reaction, nothing would. A flicker of what might have been annoyance or pain was all she got.

"Damn, what did that guy do to piss her off?" Joel looked at the photo and thought of the many times he'd seen her on the verge of this kind of thing. He'd never seen her actually use the halisen, but it had been brandished frequently when Yoshi became too absorbed in his work.

"I don't think there was anything he could do that wouldn't have made her mad. Although that time I think it was something to do with breaking the bust from art class." Kyoko smiled wistfully, remembering old times. "That's Sousuke, by the way."

Joel looked at the picture more closely, then at Kyoko. "Sagara? _The _Sousuke?"

"The one and only. Why, did she talk about him with you, too?"

"Only once. But I think she and Yoshi discussed him quite a few times." At the mention of Yoshi's name, Kaname turned from the window to stare at Joel.

"It's Wednesday. I have to go running at three." She looked around, presumably for a clock. Joel and Kyouko stared at each other. It was Thursday, in point of fact, but this was the most lucid comment Kaname had made all afternoon. She smiled at them. "You guys want to come? Yoshi won't mind." Her expression guileless, and her friends both had to fight the immediate sadness the statement brought.

"We'll have to ask the doctors if it's all right for you to go out, Kaname, but I'd be happy to go running with you, if that's what you'd like." Kyouko had decided on cautious encouragement, at least to try to keep her talking.

"You two pretty ladies stay right here, and I'll go ask." Joel stood and gave Kyouko a significant look, do you really think this is a good idea? She shrugged and he headed back to the nurses station.

Kaname watched him go, then pored over a few of the pictures. Kyouko was beginning to fear that her friend had relapsed into her dream world, when the the blue-haired one suddenly reached out and snatched one of the pictures Joel had brought. It showed herself and Chikitaka-san in the lab. He held her in a bear-hug a few inches off the floor and she was clearly laughing. Kaname held the photo close to her face for several moments, staring at it intently, then she looked in the direction of the nurses station, out the window and behind herself before grabbing Kyouko's hand.

"Keep this picture for me, will you?" She closed Kyouko's hand over the photograph and looked up, as though waiting for some acknowledgment. Kyouko, unsure what to do, nodded and tucked the picture into one of her photo albums. She could always give it back to Joel later, after making a copy for her friend. As quickly as it had come, Kaname's lucidity seemed to flow away. By the time Joel returned, she was staring out the window and rocking slightly back and forth.

"The doctors said you shouldn't go running until after they take the stitches out, but we can all go for a walk. Would you still like to go?"

"initialgpserrorbeyondacceptablparameters...Huh?" Kaname looked up. Joel decided to ignore the lapse.

"Would you like to go for a walk in the park?"

"Oh. Yes. Sure would. Can't get out of shape just because of a little bump on the head, right?" She smiled, and Joel decided to take it at face value. Maybe she was coming around. "Let's get these put away." The three of them quickly began replacing pictures in the albums and boxes they'd been brought in. Within moments, the room looked just as it had this morning, with the exception of its occupant, who seemed strangely energized for someone on that many anti-psychotics and sedatives.

They made it as far as the nurses station when Joel's cell phone went off. Digging it out of the satchel, he saw his roommate's phone number. While Kyouko helped Kaname find her shoes in the alcove behind the desk, he took the call.

"Hey Joel," surprisingly, Jan was speaking Dutch for once. What the hell?

"What's up?" he fell easily into his native tongue.

"Look, I just got back, and somebody's tossed the place. It's a mess!"

"WHAT!?"

"Yeah, all the drawers are out, stuff everywhere. If it were mid-terms I'd figure you went on one of your tears, but this is a bit messy even for a world class slob like you." He was joking, trying to make light of it. Joel was in fact almost compulsively tidy. "Did you piss off the wrong people?"

Good question. Their grant sponsors had been getting more than a little pissy about the lack of notes lately, but if they were really ticked, they'd initiate legal action. Unless... did someone know about the notes in his satchel? His mind snapped back to what Jan was saying.

"Oh, and there's a message for you from the police department. They need you back for further questioning at 3:15. I guess there are still some things they want to clear up. How long are they planning to grill you, anyway?"

"Probably until my last hair turns grey, or at least until Kaname gets lucid and Yoshi returns from the dead," he sighed. "They give you any idea how long they wanted me for?"

"Nope, just that as one so 'intimately involved with the project' they expected your 'eager' cooperation in determining the cause of your friend's death." There was a pause on the line as Jan waited and Joel shoved his battered emotions back under control. "Aw man! Did they have to knock over my philodendron?"

"If the cops call back, tell them I'm on my way. I've got to run if I'm going to make it. Catch you later," he thought for a moment. "Say, I just thought of something. Can you crash at Toji-san's for a bit? I might have a hot date later." Or someone might decide to show up in person later, and I've seen too many spy movies to want my roommate to meet anyone who does...

Jan laughed. "Gotcha. I'll ghost until I hear back from you. Good luck!" They hung up.

"Kaname, something came up and I can't go with you two today. I'll see you tomorrow, though."

"Sure thing, Joel. Say 'hi' to Yoshi for me." And she walked out. He sighed. Well it was better than catatonia... wasn't it?

--------------------------------------

"I'm afraid I must report that the search revealed nothing. At this point in time, neither the lab nor the assistant's residence contained anything which might constitute design plans. Operatives will conduct a search of the girlfriend's residence this evening, however, I must repeat my assertion that simply retrieving the asset and reverse-engineering it may be our best option at this point."

"Always practical. Has it occurred to you that Agent Vandenberg was effectively eliminated by an untrained, pacifist scientific researcher? The man had no weapons, no martial arts training that we've uncovered, and no warning of Agent Vandenberg's approach."

"He had a greater familiarity with the lab. Perhaps he used the asset in a weapons capacity."

"Ah, but he couldn't have. Our last transmission indicated he was not in the asset at the time of the attack."

"So you think he may have created some sort of remote control for it?"

"Perhaps. Or perhaps he had help. A second pilot. In either case, simply picking up what could potentially be a deadly trap would seem ill advised."

"A second pilot seems unlikely. Mr. Vermeer was no where near the lab at the time of the occurrence. As for a remote... none has been found."

"No, I think your focus may be a trifle off. They call it Saya, a woman's name, or hadn't you noticed?"

"The girlfriend?"

"They say the female of the species is more deadly than the male. For her sake and our amusement, let us hope so."


	3. Chapter 3

a/n Sorry for the delay--took a quick trip to eastern Europe and then fought my way through what I'm afraid is a rather boring chapter. My sincerest thanks to everyone who submitted reviews: they've been both motivating and inspirational. Further critique is always appreciated.  
  
Chapter 3.

_The best laid plans of mice and men..._

It was nice to be heading into a first world nation for once. Mao sat in the cockpit jump-seat of the modified C-5 cargo jet, and watched the crowded shores of eastern Japan growing on the horizon. It was a rare treat to be able to anticipate clean, well marked roadways and aesthetically appealing architechture. Their last six months had been almost entirely composed of north African deployments and the thought of entering a country where she didn't have to cover her head (when not in uniform) was damn nearly euphoric. Too bad there wasn't likely to be enough time to get in any shopping (or bar hopping). She stood and made her way back to the hold for final checks and landing prep.

"Tell me again why we need two M-9's and a truck for this mission?" Mao gritted her teeth at the comment. Fortunately, there was always time to send Weber to the infirmary...

"Hard to move 700 pounds of machinery around without a truck."

"And two A-S's?"

"Backup. Something blasted the hell out of that lab, so in case whatever it is happens again, it would be nice not to be on the f#ed side of the firepower equation."

"Well, hell, if you're that scared, why didn't we just bring the Arbalest and a couple of tac nukes just in ca--" Kurz was sprawling sideways in the netting, gasping with sudden lack of lung capacity before he could finish his statement. He smirked. "Sorry."

"Right. Let's go over the plan one last time. Sousuke, you with us?" The younger sergeant had been staring off into space during their interchange, but nodded immediately, hearing his name. "Good. Okay, so when we touch down at the airport, I'll be meeting with our local rep. Our agent's set it up with the local PD so that I can interview the lab assistant. I'll get as many particulars on this thing as possible, and extend the captain's invitation for a field trip to Mr. Vermeer. According to intelligence, he's the only one left alive with technical knowledge regarding the project. Kurz, you'll take up position to monitor the main doors and windows of the lab building. We're going to want to know when everyone goes home for the night. Park your A-S as close as you can conceal it, then find a friendly rooftop and keep an eye out for lights in the windows and folks going home—and no getting distracted trying to look down coeds shirts with your scope!"

"Aw, but they're just soo cute!" He smiled irrepressibly as Mao glared at him, but nodded to let her know he still got the message.

"Sergeant Major, what is your strategy for extracting the project from the building? The building designs indicate insufficient clearances for us to simply lift it using our A-S's, and you've not mentioned the requisition of a forklift. Will demolition of an exterior wall be involved?" Sagara was to the point as always.

"Negative. This thing _is_ an A-S, so presumably, it can be piloted to walk out of the building on its own power. Visually at least, it doesn't seem to have sustained any damage. I'm hoping that the lab assistant can give me a crash course to get it moving out of the building. If it's too complicated for that, perhaps he'll be able to walk it out for us himself."

"Given that I have the most experience in piloting the widest range of A-S models, might I suggest that I might be better suited to the task of learning and piloting this new one, Ma'am?"

"Sousuke wants to play with the new toy. He's got a point, though. That thing's so small, your, uh, assets might make it a tight squeeze in the torso, oh fearless leader."

"Weber, if you utter another word other than 'Roger' I'm going to take away your hope of grandkids, GOT ME?"

"Roger."

"Fine. In answer to your question, Sousuke, I believe you'll be most effective obtaining the mission's secondary objective. While Kurz is in position monitoring the lab, and I'm dealing with the lab assistant, you're to locate and determine an exit strategy for Chidori," she paused, noticing the way his face went blank and unreadable. "It's my understanding that the facility currently housing her has minimal security, but I don't think there's going to be a legal or above-board way to extricate her. Hit her apartment first, and see if you can find anything that might tell us what her exact involvement in all of this is, pack her some clothes and such, then relocate to the clinic and be ready to grab her and rendezvous with us at the lab on my signal." She tried to find some clue as to his feelings in her friend's eyes. He stared at the floor.

"I don't know what to say to her," his words were almost inaudible against the hum of the engines. Mao nodded in sympathy, then clapped him on the shoulder.

"Jump off that bridge when you come to it."

------------------------------------

Joel was sweating and out of breath when the officer lead him to the board room. He'd had to make one small detour, and had been watching his back rather carefully the whole time. Entering the room, he was surprised to see a woman in what appeared to be some sort of military uniform sitting at the table with the usual detectives. One of them he recognized. Detective Yoshinaka was with school security and had been the one to interrogate him at the scene.

"Mr. Vermeer, thank you for responding so quickly. Allow me to introduce Officer Kagura and Sgt. Maj. Mao of the JSDF." They all bowed back and forth, Joel having become rather adept at Japanese courtesies in his time at school. He noticed that the so called sergeant major was a little awkward at it, and stifled a smile. It had been a long day and he was going to have to be careful.

"Detective, may I ask before we begin whether the incident is still being considered a homicide or if it has been reclassified an accident?" At first, he'd been under suspicion, and he did not want to give them any chance comment which could be construed as incriminating. It was bad enough he had to lie to them to the degree he'd already done.

"At present, the incident is being regarded as a tragic accident. Unless you have new evidence?"

"I don't think so."

"Very well, then in that case, I'd like to go over the incident with you again from the top for my colleagues' benefit." The detective's voice was smooth and reasonable, and Joel tried desperately to keep his expression from revealing his frustration as he nodded. His time should be spent with Kaname, or in the lab! He looked up, the woman had said something that he'd missed.

"I'm sorry, could you please repeat that?"

"I was just apologizing for putting you through this again. I'm sure you've gone over it about a million times by now." She smiled sympathetically, and he automatically chalked her out as someone to watch out for. The kind ones were the most dangerous.

"Mr. Vermeer, could you please begin the night before the incident as you did in your statement?"

Joel sighed, and then launched once again into his account of the events leading up to the horrible morning. He told them about the brainstorming session the night before; how he'd left around midnight; how Kaname had not been present when he left; how Yoshi had a habit of staying late; how he'd had no reason to suspect anything unusual that night; how the project had been almost finished and showed no signs of catastrophic errors that he could detect. He carefully omitted the part about note-taking, the latest security measures, and the last letter that Yoshi had shown him. It took an hour. They cross questioned him, trying to elicit some alternate response, and he praised his verbatim memory once again when they failed to trip him up. Sgt. Mao never said a word.

He asked for a drink and was given a glass of water before retelling the details of the following morning. By now, he was able to recite them without pausing, only a fraction of a breath in the space where he omitted her last words: _I killed him..._ and the screaming.

The detective and officer asked a few clarifications regarding the damage, and he thought he was just about off the hook when the woman finally cleared her throat.

"Was there any damage to the 'project'?"

"None that I could see, but I didn't run a diagnostic or anything."

"No signs of the explosion? No dirt?" The woman sounded merely curious, but he looked at her sharply—could she know?

"I didn't look at it all that closely. I was a bit preoccupied."

"And have you been back to the scene since then to inspect the 'project'?"

With an effort of will, he managed to keep his face neutral. "No. Not since that morning."

"Oh, good. Then you won't mind showing me around there today." She stood, and the others in the room did likewise.

"Sgt. would you like one of my officers to accompany you?"

"Oh, don't worry, I'm not planning on messing up the scene or anything. I'm assuming your people have been over it pretty thoroughly?" Her tone was that of someone used to being obeyed by local authorities. Not surprisingly, Yoshinaka-san backed down.

"Of course. Yes, anything you'd like to do there is quite all right with us."

"Good," she smiled, "I'm assuming you won't be needing Mr. Vermeer back this afternoon?"

"No, we know where to track him down." Joel did not miss the implied command that he should not do anything to change that. Within moments, he and the Sgt. Major were walking from the police station towards the parking lot.

"I'll drive, if you'll give directions." She pointed to a servicably nondescript car, and he hopped in. "So tell me," she asked as she buckled her seatbelt and began to wind her way into traffic, "what weren't you telling them?"

Joel felt like he'd been dumped into a bucket of ice-water and his hands clenched reflexively on his jeans. "Sure, if you'll tell me just who the hell you are," he forced a bravado he didn't feel. "Turn left here."

Mao smiled. "You know the school and the police are both providing us with their full cooperation. You wouldn't want me reporting that you'd decided to get touchy all of a sudden, would you?" She'd been watching him intensely all through the interview, and while she was quite certain that he was every bit the scared, young undergrad who'd just lost a close friend, there was something cautious and calculating about him that made her curious.

"No, but then, I didn't want my room searched this afternoon either."

"What?" this was the first she'd heard of this. Was there other "interest" that the captain and Kalinin hadn't found out about yet?

"I have problems with trusting someone when I don't even know who they're working for, 'cause I'd bet dollars to pesos it's not the JSDF. You'll be turning right at the next light." Did he really keep glancing in the rear view mirror? Who was he looking for? The Sergeant Major did a scan of her own as they wound their way through the streets. No sign of a tail to the rear, but that didn't mean they weren't being followed.

"I see. Well, suffice it to say, we're the good guys—we even have a mutual friend: Miss Chidori?"

"Hmm. Yeah, funny how she's in no position to verify that." She heard the hint of grief and bitterness under his sarcasm. They sat in an uneasy silence as traffic stopped for a red light. Time seemed to drag, while Mao wracked her brain for some idea as to how to convince him. It's not like Kaname would have mentioned herself or any of the others to her college friends. Traffic began to flow again, and the young man in the passenger seat shook himself. "Look, I'm sorry I'm being so paranoid. It's not really my style, but things have been pretty crazy around here lately. Yoshi—that's Chikitaka-san—was starting to get really nervy the last couple weeks, and I didn't believe him that anything was wrong. Then he turns up dead, my other friend loses her marbles in spectacular fashion and I get accused of murder—well, not officially, but still. For all I know, you could be one of the folks he was scared of. Then again, you could be just an ordinary grunt, trying to do an ordinary job, and stuck listening to a whining kid with a persecution complex." He smiled ruefully. "Any ideas how to get around this impasse?"

"Not unless by some chance Chidori happened to mention a friend named Melissa Mao."

"Wait a minute, you're Melissa?" Suddenly, it was as though reality had tilted thirty degrees and he was looking at her as one might view an orchid sprouting in thin air.

"She mentioned me?"

"You're a mercenary! You're an A-S pilot for some secret group that handles lofty causes all over the world." Mao nodded, and Joel stared at the dash. "Holy shit, I thought she was making it up. Go straight at this next light and then follow it around to the left." She did as he directed while Joel carefully replayed his last conversation with Chikitaka and Chidori in his head. Greetings, ordering, joke about the guy standing on the tire in a thunderstorm, whispers, worries, the letter from Vrees, the weird quote, and finally, the worst case scenario: _"So Joel, if we are both eaten by mountain lions, the money goes to my next of kin, Yoshi's house is for poor college kids in love, and Saya, well I don't know how you'd ever find them, but give Saya to one of these three people..."_ Bingo. "I have a solution to our impasse. I'll trust you, if you can tell me who or what Urzu-6 is."

Mao was surprised, to say the least, but she had to admit, it was something that only someone who was involved in MITHRIL or at least one of Kaname's friends was likely to know. "It's a guy named Weber. Sgt. Kurz Weber."

Joel let out a long sigh. "Thank God. Pull into that underground parking lot there." He pulled out his cell phone and selected a pre-dialed number. Ignoring the curious look of the driver, he waited for the familiar beeps. "Saya, authorization Vermeer-I-don't-speak-Japanese. Power up for routine maintenance."

--------------------------------

She watched the sun rise over the ocean. It had been a lovely weekend getaway. They'd had such a wonderful time. Dinner last night had been as romantic as she could have hoped, and neither one of them had mentioned K2.0 the whole time. Yoshi was still sleeping. She'd traced the strong line of his jaw and brushed the soft, black bangs from his face, but stopped herself from waking him. The sea and memories called her.

Was a certain sergeant waking up beneath those waves? Did he still sleep beneath the bunk? Did he ever dream of her, as she still dreamed of him? She looked back at Yoshi. Was she cruel to even try to love someone else? The young scientist deserved better than half a heart. And he was all she could have hoped for. Yoshi was kind and thoughtful, tremendously intelligent, dedicated to his work, but usually not obsessively so. He spent a lot of time in the lab, but he always made time for her. He paid attention to her feelings. He never tried to change her, and he wasn't intimidated by her formidable personality. She couldn't bully him. They had a lot of fun together, and she knew he would bend heaven and earth to make her happy... so why couldn't she love him as much as he loved her? Outside, a seagull cried.

_Why didn't you come back? Why didn't you fight? _The path of memories and recriminations was familiar. How could someone who willingly risked his life at the orders of people whose causes were seldom explained to him fail to fight for something that meant a great deal to him? He'd related almost everything else in life to war, how could he have missed the parallels in love? Not that she'd done any better. She sighed. Perhaps, in the end, she simply hadn't been as important to him as he to her. But who the hell was he to decide that sort of thing without her permission! If she decided he was the lodgepole of her life, then he damn well should have noticed and responded in kind, not just backed down at the first obstacle (well, okay, there had been six months of obstacles and it was the last one—her challenge—that finally ended it, but that wasn't the point!). She had spent so much of her valuable time training him to fit in, including him in her world, letting him into her heart... _But now it's over, so why can't you just get the hell out of my memories too?_

She pushed aside the vague uneasy feelings that ran around in her head, and focused on the waves outside. Spending so much time listening to the Whispers lately had definitely weakened her hold on her emotions, but she wasn't about to give in now. She would move on, dammit! Her life was good. Her friends were great, and Yoshi... _would never be Sousuke_. But maybe that was a good thing?

"Thinking about him again?" Kaname startled; she hadn't heard him get up. She turned to answer, but Yoshi stepped up behind her, and wrapping his arms around her, joined her viewing of the waves.

"Yoshi-chan, I--"

"Shhh. In every experiment, you have to collect all the data before attempting a final analysis. There are things you still don't know, or you wouldn't be here. There are things I don't know, or we might be more than friends."

"We are more than friends. I just don't know what. Am I using you? Are you using me? Am I more to you than a goose that lays golden eggs? Are you more to me than a substitute for a moron I can't seem to get out of my head?" She leaned into his embrace. "You deserve better than to play second fiddle to a memory. And if I can't get over a guy from high school, who has probably long since moved on, that's my problem."

"So we have a lot of data to track down." There was a smile in his voice. "I'm not an emotional masochist, Kaname. If you told me right now that you felt nothing for me, I would let you go. But at the moment, I don't think it's that black and white. I _am_ using you. You are the gatekeeper to the discoveries that set my mind on fire. You're the negligee on the mistress of science." He tickled her sides and they both laughed for a moment before he continued. "The technology we're creating together will change the world as we know it, and that knowledge is addictive." He kissed her hair. "So maybe I'm the guilty one. You deserve better than a man who loves even those parts of you that aren't you, who asks you to risk your sanity over and over for the sake of his addiction... It might be in the long run that you'd even be safer if I ended it today."

There was a silence. They both knew what he was talking about. Even Yoshi's love of pure science hadn't been able to overlook the military potential of what they were creating. Kaname had seen it almost instantly, and had had to fight with herself as her mind wandered down avenues that could only have been learned from one person. Still, it wasn't paranoia if they really might be out to get you. She had seen the letter from Vrees on Yoshi's work bench.

He turned her to face him, and smiled. "But look at it this way. Until I finish the project, you won't know beyond a doubt if it was only your secret self that attracted me. And until you use it to reach him and have that conversation, I won't know if you might really love me."

"So the data collection continues." She smiled.

"It does."

"And security measures?"

"I'm taking your advice. If the key to you and me is in this thing, I'm not about to let some government agency steal it."

_...eliminationofprimarytargetcomplete.fieldstrengthreturningtonormal.secondarytargetlifesignsfading..._

----------------------------------------------

_I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm a killer, and I'm probably going to die, but I'm not crazy._ Kaname's thoughts as she and Kyoko began walking around the park were repetitive, but at least the curious whisper-voice was quiet for the moment. She had to keep it at bay, though, so she concentrated on the ordinary, every-day sights around her. _I'll think about that night later. I'll think about that night when I'm up to it. Maybe I'll forget about that night entirely... at least for now. For now, it's a beautiful day and the breeze feels nice, and my friend and I are having a nice walk. _ She looked at Kyoko, feeling suddenly guilty for worrying her.

"It's a pretty day, huh?"

Kyoko looked searchingly at her for a moment, before her expression took on the overly happy smile of one humoring a small child or dangerous dog. "Yes, Kaname. It's very pretty. Do you feel better being outside?"

"Look, you don't have to do that. I'm not crazy, okay? I'm really sorry I worried you, but I'll be just fine." She smiled. "Out of idle curiosity, how long was I out of it?"

"It's been eight days. Are you really feeling better?? I mean, just a few minutes ago..." she didn't finish her statement, and Kaname felt a surge of embarrassment thinking of how she might have been acting.

"I don't know if I'm completely better, but I know I'm not going to let this thing get the better of me, you know? Especially not when I've got such good friends to help me." She gave Kyoko's hand a squeeze and her friend smiled.

"Oh, I'm so glad! I was so worried about you! We all were. Joel and I kept coming over to show you pictures and you just sat there and mumbled all this crazy stuff and the police asked us a couple of times if you had said anything about that night and how Yoshi--" Kyoko stopped, her hand flying to her mouth. _Yoshi!_ For a moment, images of his head flying back and blue arms wrapped around him and a face burning to ash filled Kaname's mind. Colors swirled and faint whispers murmured at the edge of her consciousness, but she shoved them away. "Oh, Kaname, I'm sorry!" There were tears at the edges of Kyoko's eyes as they both paused by a bench and Kaname gripped it's cold metal in an effort to stabilize herself. I AM NOT CRAZY!

"How is Yoshi?" _WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SAYING?! HE'S DEAD AND YOU KILLED HIM!!_

Kyoko stared at her. "He's gone, Kaname. He didn't make it."

"No, he wouldn't leave me..." _UNLESS YOU KILLED HIM! You are NOT crazy, so quit trying to hide behind it. _ "I'm sorry. Maybe we should talk about something else."

"Yes, maybe that would be better. Um... did you hear that Shinji's getting married?" They started walking again, talking of inconsequential things. The light, familiar cadence of small talk and gossip was like a refuge in a storm. By the time they'd circled back to the clinic, Kyoko was gossiping as though nothing had ever been wrong, but Kaname was starting to feel the strain of ignoring the whispers and keeping her thoughts focused on the discussion. _Give up. Give in. Let me have control again. You know you're not ready to deal with the truth...Killer._

"No."

"What?" Kyoko paused in her story about the guy in her economics class, noticing that Kaname once again wore that horrible vague expression. They had reached the clinic doors. "I'm sure you won't have to stay much longer. I mean, you really seemed fine on our walk." She tried to sound encouraging.

Kaname shook herself, forced a smile and shoved her darker thoughts as far back as they would go. "Thanks. Maybe tomorrow I'll go home. If I do, would you like to get together and go shopping? I feel like I could really use a new outfit," she ran a hand through the uneven hair where parts had been shaved to accommodate stitches , "and maybe a trim."

"I'd love to. Just call me when you get home!"

"Say, do you have a couple bobby pins I could borrow? This hair is driving me crazy--bad choice of words."

Kyoko fished around in her purse for a couple moments before coming up with a few of the pins. She helped Kaname secure her hair artfully enough that it looked almost normal, then held up a compact mirror for her inspection. "Could be better, but it could be worse." They both smiled and returned to the nurses station. Kyoko signed the chart and the nurse scanned Kaname's wrist tag, readmitting her in the log. Then the two friends hugged, and Kaname was lead back to her room. She made it as far as the window seat before the whispers overwhelmed her and reality was swept away in a haze of numbers and terrifying ideas. Offensive potential of the Psi field includes reconnaissance, weapons placement, battlefield sensor obstruction, special ops maneuvering...


	4. Chapter 4

a/n: Thanks for the technical advice; I'll change that aircraft model number the next time I revise that chapter.

Chapter 4.

_Absence makes the heart grow fonder._

It was almost a relief to find the locks on Kaname's door already picked.

Sousuke had begun his part of the assignment by avoiding it – or rather by attending to details only peripherally related to Kaname. A review of the clinic's blueprints had revealed a few challenges which could prove troublesome; namely, that the clinic was on the fourth floor of a four-building complex, which surrounded an inner garden/park. Patient rooms all had windows, however those windows faced the garden, and would therefore be somewhat more difficult to infiltrate without being seen via the windows of the three other buildings. Far from an impossible problem, given that surveillance from one of the facing buildings was unlikely, but he noted it while thinking of the likelihood that Kaname would shout at him, echoing her voice off the other walls and possibly alerting the "neighbors." She _would_ shout at him, wouldn't she?

He'd spent several disturbing moments reflecting on the rescues of other Whispereds. Of the five with which he'd personally been involved, two had behaved in what might be called an ordinary fashion, but three had been... well, lost. Their eyes had held a curious distance, a blankness that was at once unnerving and saddening. They were the eyes of victims: eyes which had seen too much, and had given up on viewing the real world because of it. When they spoke, their words were disjointed. Sometimes, only obscure and technical phrases passed their lips. Other times, they repeated words over and over, or muttered incomprehensibly. Would Kaname be like these? Had she fallen into that grey space that MITHRIL coldly classified as "end-stage"? He pictured having to tranquilize her and load her onto a helicopter bound for one of their Whispered research facilities, as he'd done three times before, and shuddered at the thought. Perfectly reasoned military protocols somehow made less sense when applied to friends... or one-time loves.

But perfectly executed assignments were what was expected of him. He would not fail. Better not to think about the specific person involved. He decided that collecting Kaname's things would be a good place to start. Actual acquisition of the individual herself could wait until the last possible moment, so as to keep _complications_ to a minimum. _That's right, anything to keep from having to actually_ talk _to her_. He refocused on the blueprints. There wasn't anything remotely resembling a good "parking" space for the M-9, and extricating Kaname really shouldn't require that kind of firepower anyway. Best plan would likely be to go in on foot, take the stairs to the roof, drop a rappelling line, enter through her window, and retreat the same way.

A recent photograph indicated she was about the same size she'd been in high school, so carrying her would not be a problem, provided she didn't resist too much. Kaname had not been trained in martial arts or street fighting when he'd known her, but her unpredictability and overall athletic skill had been sufficient to take him down a time or two. Admittedly, on those occasions, he had not been regarding her as a threat, and further, had been under strict orders not to injure her, but it was still reasonable to assume she could make life difficult. Was it odd that he almost hoped she would? The thought of a wrestling match with Kaname was not without its appeal... _What am I thinking?!_

There could be some complications regarding medications. According to the representative's report, Kaname was being kept mildly sedated most of the time, and more importantly, had sustained a head injury in the initial incident. That meant subduing her, in the event she did not come willingly, could be tricky. Tranquilizers were right out – drug interactions being outside his field of expertise – and blows to the head could be lethal. Of course, that always left simply tying her up, or choking her... he made a mental note to bring duct tape in addition to the usual zip ties. He truly hoped it wouldn't come to that.

Thinking of the mechanics of kidnapping, his mind wandered to thoughts of those societies in which kidnapping women had entirely other meanings. The parallels brought him up short. A thrill of guilt washed over him and he blushed. _If you're honest with yourself, that is what you're about to do. You've held her in your mind as some kind of paramour: a distant, untouchable Lady, whose sleeve you wear into battle. You've imagined this meeting a hundred times—the knight errant returning to his muse, his inspiration, the one for whom he fights._ It was a pretty, poetic fantasy, but now, walking towards her apartment building, the reality was forcibly intruding. _She hasn't been waiting for you. She didn't give you her sleeve to wear. The truth is, she seems to have moved on with her life, and she probably won't appreciate the reappearance of the otaku who made her high school years hell. Especially when the knight arrives too late to save her..._

Guilt and anger at whoever had hurt Kaname colored his thoughts. How could that scientist have involved her in his project? Why on earth would she have gone along with it? Kaname hated the military, hated arm slaves, and despised intrigue – except perhaps in the field of gossip and interpersonal relationships. She had always seemed to have something of a gift in that arena, at least from his vantage point. He wished he were as perceptive as she in the field of human emotions. Then, perhaps he wouldn't be sitting here, wondering just what a girl thought of him who inarguably had once been his best friend.

Would it matter to her that he'd changed? His teammates had remarked on the improvement to his ability to assess risks and minimize side-effects and collateral damage when dealing with them. He was no longer the king of overkill, for all that he was still renowned for his thoroughness in handling threats. Did it matter that the conscience who preached moderation in the back of his mind had blue hair and brown eyes?

_Enough. This line of thought is distracting you from your task. _ He entered the building, an unassuming four-storey affair less than half a mile from campus, took the back staircase to the fourth floor, and was about to pick the lock on her door when he noticed the marks. _Someone has already been here? _ Immediately, life was simpler. The emotional ramifications of a three year separation might be almost incomprehensible, but intruders in a friend's apartment were something he could handle.

---

Two deadbolts and the regular door lock. Kyoko hummed as she carefully unlocked her friend's door. Joel had given her Chikitaka-san's dupes of Kaname's keys on Monday, and she'd finally decided to come over and water the plants and such. She seriously doubted Kaname would be home tomorrow – the nurse had mentioned that she was scheduled for an MRI at 11:00 and would likely not be available for visits until after two o'clock. Still, whenever Kaname did manage to get released, a clean apartment with live plants would probably be a lot better for her mood than whatever shape she'd left the place in. _Hmm, and moving her pictures of Yoshi somewhere inconspicuous might be a good idea too._

The door swung open about half way, before catching on something. Kyoko edged through, then abruptly tugged her camera out of one pocket and began snapping away while her mind tried to adjust to what was going on. Kaname's apartment was a mess. Drawers were emptied on the floor, books scattered all over her desk and sofa, and the kitchenette was a jungle of cooking utensils, dishes and napkins. She was about to call the police when she heard a noise from the bedroom. A good photojournalist would get a picture of the bad guy if she could, she told herself, feeling a combination of excitement at possibly scooping a story for the campus news and fear—bad guys having a tendency to do mean things. _Kaname would want to know who broke her antique tea set._ Motivation found. Quietly setting her purse on the floor, she pulled out a cannister of pepper spray, and holding it in one hand and her camera in the other, crept towards the bedroom door. It began to open. She held her breath, and... pepper spray and Glock 18 squared off beneath the surprised countenances of their owners.

"Kyoko!"

"Sousuke?!?"

---

"I've switched on the power to charge the capacitors. They were just about empty when I checked them the last time. This way we'll be able to move her, if you like." This was not precisely true, but he still wasn't sure he wanted to confess having been here every day for the past week after the police had left. Just because he was now pretty sure that this was in fact one of Kaname's acquaintances from high school didn't mean she wouldn't communicate his indiscretions to the local authorities. In point of fact, the capacitors had been drained down to nothing and Saya had been left standing with the wrong heel on the contact point, smashing the coupling all out of usefulness. He'd had to enlist his roommate's help to wrestle the old coupling out of the fixture—Jan wasn't the sharpest nail in the box, but he was strong—and had subsequently "borrowed" a suitable replacement from the industrial robotics lab down the hall.

The bigger problem had been that he couldn't find Saya's remote access headset. Yoshi had developed it to communicate with Saya while wandering around the lab. He claimed he couldn't think as well when actually in the machine. The headset was damn handy, but there hadn't been sign one of it in the lab or the hidden storage cabinet, and he'd had to jury-rig his laptop to interface with the A.I. for maintenance and such. It was almost painfully slow by comparison. _I wonder if Yoshi kept a spare at his house?_ That thought hadn't occurred to him before, but he added it to the list of things he needed to check out once they'd finished up in here.

Joel lead Mao down into the lab, past the police tape and into that horrible room. He gestured for her to go on ahead while he paused to get the lights, and while her back was to him, he tried a "covert" check of Yoshi's floor cabinet. It looked like any other slab of the concrete, and the sweeping marks he'd made over it the last time he'd been here did not appear to be disturbed. Good. Beyond that, it was obvious the cops had removed pretty much anything that wasn't pinned down. Most of the debris had been cleared away and the place seemed almost tidy, but the stains on the floor remained. He swallowed hard, and ignored them, heading to the back of what had been the containment room where Saya stood waiting.

---

"So you're here to rescue her." After the initial shock of running into a familiar face in an unexpected situation, Kyoko had calmed down surprisingly quickly. Sousuke's explanation that he had encountered the room as she saw it while coming to visit an old friend, and had subsequently attempted (unsuccessfully) to pursue the perpetrator didn't seem to register with her, as her mind apparently came up with its own rationale. "It's just like high school," she smiled at him, even as tears brimmed in her eyes, "Some bad guy messed up her apartment and you're going to protect her from him, right? I just wish she could see you. She'd be so happy..."

"Would she?" The question came out more seriously than he'd intended. Kyoko looked at him with the innocently accurate perception that had always been her forte, then nodded.

"It has been a long time, and a lot has happened, and there was Yoshi and Joel and all their work. She's told me a thousand times how over you she is, but Sousuke, the thing to remember is that she's told me a _thousand times_." She looked him in the eye to see if he understood. Failing to find comprehension, she began to pick through the debris scattered around the closet. "You're supposed to get some stuff to take with her on a trip?"

"Yes, that is my objective in this location."

"I won't ask why. I think a trip would probably be really good for her right now, well, at least if there's any risk of her winding up like Yoshi. I think someone had it in for them." she found Kaname's largest backpack, and set it on the bed beside Sousuke. "I can help pack, if you want... I know what she likes to wear."

"Thank you. That would be helpful. We will likely be visiting locations with relatively warm climates."

"How romantic," she smiled, finding the hammer she'd been looking for and tapping the back of the closet. Sousuke blushed, thought about commenting, and decided against it. Kyoko reached further into the closet and tugged on something, stumbling back with a wooden box, slightly larger than a shoebox in her arms. "While I pack, you can look at this, but only if you'll promise never to tell her that I showed you."

"If you do not believe Kaname would want me to see this, I do not see how..."

"Silly, she wants you to see it, she just doesn't want you to know that she wants you to see it. She thought she was never going to see you again." She set the box on his lap, then began picking clothing up off the floor, folding it and placing it in the backpack. Sousuke, nonplussed but curious, opened the box. Inside, he was startled to discover his letters. Every letter he'd ever sent was there, along with postcards and printouts of emails. Pictures of himself from his time at school were tied in stacks beneath the letters, along with one or two photos, which he knew had been taken aboard the de Danaan. A closed manilla envelope was folded along one side. In the bottom of the box was a journal. The pages were filled with newspaper clippings, first of the various "incidents" at the high school, but further in the book, he began to find reports of terrorist uprisings, drug cartel infighting, child slavery rings, and numerous other such criminal activities with the sole commonality of having been mysteriously done away with or otherwise brought to justice. More than half of them were events in which MITHRIL had played a role. Had she been trying to keep tabs on him?

"Did she show all of this to you?,"

"All of what?" Kyoko paused in collecting toiletries to look over his shoulder at the journal. "Hmm. No, she never showed me those. Maybe she missed all the adventure in her life." She laughed, and resumed packing. "You know, life got pretty boring for a while without you."

"Until she became involved with Chikitaka-san?" He hadn't meant to ask, but couldn't help it. Kyoko picked up a pair of socks and folded it.

"Yoshi did make life interesting for her, but it was different with him. It's a little hard to explain. They needed each other." She placed the socks in the bag and began with another. "At first, I thought they might wind up together, but then they got to working on that science project of his and they kinda changed. They were friends, like partners in crime. I think they might have been in love, but it was almost like until that thing was done, they couldn't move on with their lives. Sometimes you'd see them together and it was like they were brother and sister. Sometimes, they were like business partners. Then about four months ago, she started spending the night with him about once a week," she gathered a couple pairs of shoes while Sousuke coughed. Kyoko giggled. "She said they spent it in the lab. She'd done that a few times before, but not that often, and she started getting kinda weird."

"In what way?"

"Paranoid. Like you," she laughed. Then her face sobered and she sat down beside him. "She started taking self-defense classes and learning how to shoot, and one night, the two of us went out and had a little too much sake and next thing I know, she's laughing and telling me that if she dies, she wants me to send you her letters - they're the ones in that manilla envelope - and tell her dad she's sorry she wasn't a more traditional daughter. She was pretty drunk and definitely in a weird mood, but I think she might have been serious." Kyoko stood up and walked into the living room, leaving Sousuke to ponder what she'd said. The journal was surprisingly accurate. He considered opening the manilla envelope, but decided against it – it felt too much like an invasion of her privacy. In shifting it, however, he saw the edge of a map, folded beside it. He removed it and upon unfolding it was shocked to discover it was a nautical chart of the Mediterranean-- with the de Daanan's movements over the past month precisely and accurately charted. _How on earth had she--_ He heard Kyoko returning, and quickly poured the full contents of the box into the backpack on the bed.

"I think I've got everything worth taking. She's in some pretty serious trouble, isn't she?" Kyoko had returned with something held behind her back. She stared him in the eye as he nodded, then she sighed. When she spoke, her voice was uncharacteristically soft, and serious. "Please take good care of her, Sousuke. She's not herself right now and you two haven't seen each other in so long, and I know she's not always the easiest to get along with, but she's my best friend." Kyoko bowed her head, letting her bangs hide her eyes, and held out a familiar paper fan. "Please don't let anything else happen to her."

He took the halisen, and placed it in the top of the backpack, before slinging the latter over his shoulder. He took one last look at the devastated room. "I will protect her, no matter what." With that, he stood, said goodbye to Kyoko and left the apartment. A quick snap of the camera captured his back as he walked down the hall.

"Good luck, you two." And Kyoko's inner romantic gave a blissful sigh as she picked up the phone to call the police.

---

Now that she was actually standing in front of the thing, Mao had to admit a certain fascination for the miniature arm slave or powered suit or whatever the hell this thing was. It looked almost like an arm slave costume that one might rent for Halloween, if one had the kind of money to afford that detail. It stood about seven feet tall, with one heel braced in some sort of lock on the floor. The front seemed to be constructed of a number of solid, presumably armored, panels wired together over an inner structure of a darker material. Small lenses that might have been some sort of miniaturized ECN generators sprouted at the joints. Tubing ran along the outsides of the limbs and into the joints, yet the overall appearance was surprisingly streamlined. The "head" looked as though it would be fairly close fitting, and she took note of the fact that there didn't appear to be any air holes. Around the back, what looked like a armored backpack with wings obscured the entry method, whatever that might have been.

Joel left the room for a moment, returning from the outer lab with a laptop computer and some cabling. "I don't have enough access to tell you all that much about her, but whatever you'd like to know, I'll do my best to answer." He plugged the cables into ports in the "head" and then settled himself on the floor (there weren't any chairs) as the laptop accessed the project data files.

"Is it on?" There didn't seem to be any lights or noise to indicate that power was in fact running into the machine.

"Oh, yep. There's a period of about three minutes while it tests its circuitry and connections before turning on the lights. If there were a pilot in there, the system would use this time to get its authorization, and double check its GPS coordinates. See?" He held up the laptop, where the message "Circuit integrity check running." glowed in blue letters.

"So it takes three minutes before a pilot could even use it? That seems like it would be a rather large disadvantage." What if you had to start up under fire, or reboot after an attack? Three minutes wasn't all that long to take a shower or boil an egg, but to survive in a combat situation, it would be a veritable eternity.

"I guess that depends on what you want to do with it. This was never meant to be some sort of weapon." He watched the numbers counting down on the display. "Yoshi had a brother in the U.S. who was killed on assignment to Iraq, so he really wasn't a fan of weapons."

"His brother was a soldier?"

"A reporter. One of Yoshi's original ideas for this thing was that it could be a sort of armor used by war correspondents, both to ensure that the reporters were safe, and to help them get close enough to the action to give the folks back home the most accurate coverage."

"Huh." She looked more closely at the heel brace. "What's this?"

"Power connection. It takes a lot of power to charge the capacitors and run this thing."

"So how long can it run when it's not plugged in?"

"Hmm, that's actually kind of tricky. See, from my calculations, it should only be able to run for about half an hour, but one of the tests Yoshi ran had the thing running disconnected for over four hours." He paused as the display indicated the end of the systems check, typed in a request for the most recent test records, and switched off the sound. "I'm not sure how he did it, though. Lately, he'd gotten really secretive about the whole thing."

"Is that why there aren't any notes?" Mao noticed that the Lab Assistant suddenly became very interested in the readouts.

"Yeah, that's probably the reason."

"Uh huh. So, did this thing cause the explosion or whatever the hell it was that destroyed the lab?"

"I don't honestly know."

"But you have a theory." She locked gazes with him and it was as clear as crystal that he'd rather write a two hundred page paper on the science of unnecessarily complicated things than give her a straight answer. "It's really important that I know. My people and I are planning to transport this thing, and I sure as hell don't want to deal with any surprises if I don't have to."

"You said you were a friend of Kaname's; how close?" Lights began to flicker along the exposed tubing on the outside edges of the suit, momentarily distracting the Sergeant Major.

"It's kinda hard to explain."

"Well, would you help her move, or would you help her move bodies?" He looked up to get her reaction.

"Move, I guess. But she was very important to someone who is very important to me, so for that reason, I guess I'd probably go the extra mile to take care of her. How far gone is she?"

"Last I saw her, it looked like maybe she was coming around. Of course, a lot of that could be the drugs talking. They've been keeping her dosed to the gills whenever company is around." _Add calling Kyoko to find out how that walk went to the to do list..._He checked his watch: 19:18_. Well it's not like I was planning to sleep tonight anyway_. "Anyway, theory number one: someone planted a bomb in the lab and that's what caused all this. Yoshi was one of the most rational guys I know, so for him to be dreaming up security measures and walking around like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs" _and telling me about Kaname in case he died_ "there must have been someone threatening him."

"And theory number two?"

"Lambda driver accident. The pilot screwed up royally and blew the lab to kingdom come." A line of text scrolled across the interface window, citing activity since the last run—none—and listing off status for all the components he had access to. Same as last time, but he feigned a believable surprise. "Huh. Well it looks like whatever happened fried the primary sensors and recorders. They seem to be working now, but they overloaded the last time this thing was running. Other than that, it's all normal. I can't check on the status for the advanced capabilities, but sensors, recorders, life-support, power and motor-control are all normal."

"This thing has a lambda driver?" _Where the hell did they put it?_

"Miniaturized," he typed a few words into the laptop, unaware of the stunned expression on his audience's face.

"So you know what a lambda driver is? And Chikitaka-san knew how to build one? How to build a _miniature_ one?"

"Oh good, Saya decided to wake up. Where did you put your remote headset, girl?" he muttered in Dutch. Words scrolled in answer. _Oh shit_. He turned back to Mao, carefully deleting the last response. "As for the first, no, I don't really know what a lambda driver does, just that it's powerful and can blow things up—that's why my authorization on the system doesn't permit use of the advanced capabilities. But yes, I'd say Chikitaka knew how to build one since according to what he told me, the results were all within expected parameters."

Mao sighed and looked at the machine with new respect. "So what's it going to take to move this thing?"

"Well, the simplest way to move it would be to pack it in foam, put it in a crate and move it that way. The connection point and power source would need to be replicated at whatever lab you moved it to, and you'd have to be really careful with the fragile bits, like those field restriction fins on the back and the coolant tubing along the sides. The thing weighs about 330 kilos, so you're going to need a forklift to get it into the box," he thought for a moment, "or I could walk it into the box for you. I have enough access to walk it around within this building, since it was kinda hard to clean around."

"Does it have any explosives, munitions, volatile fuels or anything else, hazmat-wise that we'd need to worry about?" Mao had stepped back from her observation of the suit and was now looking at the laptop over the assistant's shoulder.

"Well, the coolant contains freon, and there are some rather icky chemicals in the capacitors and the hydraulic system, but nothing likely to blow up on you. It's pretty well self-contained and unlikely to leak. Safety was a top priority for the project." He went on to show her the folders of materials safety data sheets for the chemicals, safety cutoffs for the power sources and other points that might be important in shipping. "You want to be careful about the camera lenses," he pointed to what she'd thought were ECN generators, "They scratch easily and are tough to replace. Just remember that it takes sixteen lens caps and you're good."

"Going back to the part about walking this thing into a box: could you show me how to pilot it? I mean, how long would it take?"

"I've never been in any normal A-S's so I don't know how similar they are, but I'd guess they wouldn't be too different. You want to try it?" He flipped on the sound and typed one last command into the computer. The "backpack" on the unit clicked open with a hiss, the entire assembly gliding upwards to reveal what looked oddly like the inside of a mascot's costume, only with A-S controls carefully worked into the arm and leg holes and bits of circuitry everywhere.

/Welcome, Joel-san. One-run pilot authorization for routine maintenance access is accepted. Warning—access to advanced capabilities has been denied. Please introduce me to Sergeant Major Melissa Mao/.

"I think I will take it over from here."

---

"The latest report from our operative at the school?" Kalinin had been summoned to the Captain's office once again.

"Yes, I've made you a copy. It took quite a bit of digging, but apparently, major funding for this project was arranged through Vrees Mining. According to the grant, they believe that the technology would be invaluable in deep-shaft operations and underwater mining."

"But Vrees..." The Lt. Commander looked over the report. "Venserre Consortium?"

"Ah, so you remembered that," the Captain twitched the end of her braid through suddenly restless fingers. "Yes, Vrees is one of the Venserre Consortium's front companies. It appears the arms dealers may have been involved in this project for over a year now. Interestingly enough, the wording of the intellectual property agreement specifies that Vrees only gets access to all research documents and diagrams, and first bid on the production contract. Tokyo University retained rights to all products and discoveries of the research, including the prototype. Someone was very shrewd in arranging this, however given the caliber of lawyers on retainer for Vrees, you have to wonder why they didn't negotiate a better deal." Tessa had considerable experience when it came to intellectual property rights. The negotiations, agreements and contracts pertaining to her work on the De Danaan had been complicated in the extreme, and constituted something of a crash course in the field.

"If they intended to steal the technology all along, access to the notes would have been more than sufficient for them to do so."

"Except that there are no notes." She pondered the stack of papers in front of her. "So why haven't they stolen the prototype?"

"Perhaps there were notes, which the corporation managed to acquire before the scientist died. It seems unlikely that something as complex as an arm slave could be built without the assistance of some diagrams. If nothing else, certain components would have to have been contracted out for shaping and such—there's nothing to indicate that this Chikitaka person had a forge at his disposal."

"Interesting causes for speculation. At this point, I think all that we can be certain of with regards to Venserre is that they could be a problem. The team should be advised to move immediately. Tomorrow at the latest."

"They plan to move the item tonight. In addition, I believe that both Miss Chidori and Mr. Vermeer can be removed to safe locations expeditiously." He watched the Captain trying to read her concerns.

"Yes. I think that would be wise. Also, tell the team to be very careful when dealing with Miss Chidori."

"You know they would never harm her."

"I'm more concerned that she may harm them."

"More dreams?"

"Well," Tessa shuddered involuntarily remembering the last "dream." Gunshots in the night and a bloom of red spreading across the ground... She moved to stand, hit her knee on the edge of the desk, swore _sotto voce_, and sat back down to rub at the offending joint. "She's in a lot of pain."

"And yourself?"

Tessa quickly arranged a smile on her face, and smoothed her skirt. "I'm fine. I'll be perfectly happy as soon as we have everything finished."

"Of course, Madame Captain. I'll relay the messages right away."

"Thank you, Commander."

---

The sergeant and the student whirled to face the man standing at the back of the room. Mao instinctively drew her gun, even as she heard the shot and saw Joel crumple to the floor. She saw a second man behind the first and fired three shots at the pair, even as bullets thudded into the wall and floor, missing her by inches. The pair separated, the first heading towards Saya, seemingly unconcerned by the fire-fight, while the second dodged behind one of the room's concrete support columns. Mao ducked behind another, dragging Joel's limp form along.

/Voice print accepted. Enter when ready/. She heard a hiss and a click and suddenly the A-S behind them was moving. _Dammit all to hell_. She ignored it, took careful aim around the column, and fired her clip empty. Four shots in, she saw the man go down, as a chip of concrete from the column, behind which she was sheltering, split with the impact of his last hit and struck her in the eye. She dragged Joel further around the column to put more of it between the two of them and the A-S and yanked the comm unit from her vest. Blood was streaming down her face.

"Urzu-6, this is Urzu-2, we've been ambushed and are under attack, do you copy!"

"Copy that, Urzu-2, I'm on my way."

"Belay that. They've got the project, and I'm pinned down with wounded. You've got to keep them from getting out of the damn building." The A-S had removed its foot from the floor outlet and was yanking the laptop connection cables from its head. From the door to the containment room, a barrage of machine gun fire pounded the interior in her direction. She loaded another clip. "Get word to Urzu-7 to get the secondary objective as far from here as possible."

"Understood. You hang in there. Those bastards don't get to win that easy."


	5. Chapter 5

a/n: Well, apparently my monitor decided to get into the spirit of things and blew up three days ago. My office smells like ozone, and the cats are giving it a wide berth, but a replacement has finally been obtained and shows no signs of exploding, so perhaps I'll be able to write a bit more. As always, my thanks to readers and reviewers. Your suggestions and critiques are most appreciated.

Chapter 5.

_There is a fine line between genius and insanity._

_---_

_This is too much. You're taking over too much of my mind. You have to stop._

_But I don't want to. Relax. It's better this way._ Words rippled and flowed over her mind, into her lungs, around her tongue and between her teeth. Sounds issued forth without her permission.

_You have to STOP! I am still in charge of my life! NOT YOU! Let go and let me out of this!_ A hint of laughter permeated the whisper in her mind. For a moment, it sounded almost like Kurz.

_You've got to learn to relax. Give up. You're seriously outclassed here._ Sensations like falling into color, drifting on a sea of math tossed her away from the surface of thought.

I_'m going to drown!_ Panic. _I WILL NOT LET THIS HAPPEN_ but she was lost, and knew it and just as the certainty that she'd never find her way back to herself entered the swirl of her identity, the voice stopped. Words stopped. Sweet breath like spearmint gum. Soft lips drawing breath and voice away from her. She saw the backs of her eyelids, and felt the crush of arms around her, the steady thump of a heart held next to her own. _Yoshi..._

He held her and looked at her, and she realized it had been worse this time. Sweat beaded her forehead, and her arms and legs felt shaky and unstable.

"Sit down. That's enough. You're pushing yourself too hard." He eased her onto the one good chair in the lab, and handed her a half-empty bottle of water, while fanning her with a sheaf of papers. She tried to give him a reassuring smile, but could feel her hands shaking on the bottle. She gave up, took a sip, choked, took a second sip and closed her eyes enjoying the feel of real plastic between her hands and genuine imitation leather beneath her rump.

"I'm okay."

"Like hell." He looked uncharacteristically angry.

"I have to do this."

"For him?"

She wanted to deny it, to say it was for them both, but at that moment, she simply wasn't sure. "I don't know. How far are we from completing this?" It was his turn to look nervous. He sat on the edge of the bench and glared at the project they were calling K-2.0.

"One session. One more session and one last test, and I'm calling it finished no matter what. You can't go on like this, and I can't go on watching you."

"Me?" she laughed, "What about you, mister hasn't-been-to-bed-in-a-week-and-probably-hasn't-eaten-in-two-days?"

"Three," he smirked, and they smiled at each other. "At this rate it will be a toss up of what's going to happen first; you going crazy or me dropping dead of neglect."

"Enough then. Time to go get food, and when we're done, we're both going home and sleeping and not coming back into this lab until after lunch tomorrow. And that's an order!"

"Too bad I'm not a soldier," he quickly covered it with a smile, "but I'll take your commands just this once."

_-pilotintegritydirectlyproportionaltolambdadriverefficiencyindirectlyproportionaltomoleculardensityattheterminus.lambdacontainmentstronglyadvised-_

_---_

The plan was not to attempt actual retrieval until such time as Sgt. Maj. Mao alerted him via radio. Even so, there was no excuse for wasting the time until that signal was given. Sousuke began by simply walking to the nurses station and inquiring after Kaname. He'd been politely informed that visiting hours were over for the day, but that Kaname would be allowed to meet with friends the following afternoon.

"May I leave flowers for her at this time?" His face was a strange mixture of seriousness and scrutiny, at which the duty nurse could only smile.

"Well, I don't suppose there would be any harm in it. She won't be able to read the card until tomorrow..."

"She's unable to read?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that. It's just that they had to take her off the medications for tonight so that her scan would be clear tomorrow, so she's been put in restraints." Seeing the look on the young man's face, the nurse hastened to reassure him. "It's nothing really. They just wrap these bracelets around her wrists to make sure she won't fall out of bed and hurt herself. The nurses are taking very good care of her."

"I see." Restraints could add to the amount of time it would take to liberate her. Even so, he was reasonably sure he had lock-picks or, if necessary, knives up to the task of freeing the patient. "Can you provide directions to the nearest florist?"

"Oh there's one down on the second floor, near the main desk. Lots of people buy flowers for their loved ones. They have some fairly nice arrangements." The nurse smiled in encouragement. Sousuke turned on his heel and proceeded to the florist... and twenty minutes later had a short-range video transmitter neatly arranged by Kaname's bedside in a basket of lavender chrysanthemums. That task accomplished, he'd retreated to the roof to await the signal, while monitoring his former friend's room.

The first sight through the monitor had been surprisingly disturbing. Kaname was lying on a hospital bed with raised sides. Her wrists were indeed wrapped in padded cuffs, buckled tightly in leather bracers and secured by nylon straps to the sides of the bed, but further restraints – namely a strap securing her waist to the bed and one across her chest, just beneath the shoulders – were also in evidence. She was dressed in blue pajamas and covered by a cream-coloured blanket. Her long, blue hair had been bound in a thick braid and was currently arranged on one side of her face while a medical technician dabbed blood off the head wound on the other. Electrodes were placed in several locations on her head and chest. The technician seemed to be talking, but Kaname showed no sign of hearing him. Sousuke watched in appalled fascination as the technician finished up, then reached beneath the bed to produce a familiar stuffed doll. He placed it beside the young woman in the bed before walking out of camera range.

Part of Sousuke's mind was fully aware of the necessity of restraints when dealing with potentially violent individuals. He was even relatively certain that the arrangement in which Kaname found herself would not be uncomfortable. Even so, something in him wanted nothing more than to run down to the room and free her. Kaname hated not being in control, and the fact that she had not been actively protesting her confinement affirmed more than any previous information, the reality that she was not well.

An hour drifted past as he watched and waited. Kaname seemed to doze for a while, and Sousuke performed a complete check of his ropes simply to remain awake. The sun was ambling towards the western horizon; not actively setting as yet, but on its way. A number of pigeons settled in to roost along the ledge. The young sergeant's mind wandered, and for lack of anything better to do, he retrieved the Mediterranean chart from his pocket to peruse again. The rest of the backpack was currently stowed securely in the carry compartment that had been mounted to his M-9 for this assignment. That addition was a relatively recent one, developed to allow A-S pilots greater maneuverability when performing rescue operations. He remembered vividly the time in Khanka when he'd had to carry both Kurz and Kaname and had wound up flinging the young woman sky high in order to deal with a threat. Having a module designed for holding a passenger was a vast improvement.

The chart was cause for concern. The positions had been charted on average once every other day. Looking more closely, there were several points which included small arrows. The arrows were directed not along the submarine's route, but generally southward in the direction of northern Africa. Deployments? Had she shared this information with anyone? Had anyone helped her to obtain it? He knew these would be among the questions she would have to answer upon being safely removed to the custody of MITHRIL.

At 18:47, Kaname abruptly began thrashing against her restraints. Her mouth opened in yells which he could faintly hear. Almost immediately, a nurse entered the room and moved to check the monitors. Whatever he saw must have reassured him, since his posture relaxed and he walked beyond the frame for several minutes. When he returned, he fastened some sort of mask over her eyes. It looked rather like a sleeping pillow, but with earphones, and it quieted Kaname instantly. Sousuke vaguely remembered reading an article concerning mind-control via color and sound therapy and wondered whether this might be something similar. Kaname's lips moved soundlessly on the screen, but she seemed merely to be speaking. The nurse occasionally spoke as well, and something about his posture began to bother Sousuke. When the man began undoing Kaname's restraints, the suspicion became too great to ignore. He took stock of the deepening twilight. It was not yet dark enough to shield his movements as much as he'd like, and he'd yet to receive word from Mao, still...

---

_Survivability radius within the psi field is limited to the 80 effective radius of the lambda driver. Beyond this radius, integrity cannot be maintained due to deliberate lack of cohesion of the chosen string. The miniaturization of the lambda driver reduced its effective range to skin-only, string radius approximately fifty centimeters..._

_...but if the driver were enlarged..._

_...current mecha structural strength insufficient to support full-sized lambda driver weight; notable attempts to support structural weight with lambda energy, while revolutionary, are flawed by certain obvious drawbacks. Alteration of Saya to incorporate transsteel within the structural components will compensate for the additional weight. This alloy will require the following elements..._

_NO! I'M NOT LISTENING TO YOU ANYMORE! I WILL NOT WORK ON SAYA AGAIN! I'm a normal girl. I was never meant to be a scientist. I cannot do this. I'm going to forget this. _"I'M GOING TO FORGET THIS! I'M GOING TO FORGET YOU AND I'M GOING TO FORGET HIM!" She choked as alloy mix-ratios hammered her brain, and yelled simply to alleviate the feeling of suffocating. She had to find the surface. She had to escape this nightmare, and yet, the compulsion to concentrate was so strong, so seductive. All she had to do was listen, and everything would be better. If only she would surrender herself to it, she would never have to face reality or the past again. She thrashed against the soothing oblivion her mind was promising. She felt bound, trapped, tied, unable to free herself and the voice in her mind whispered its soothing horrors with something akin to smugness. If only she could break its hold, find a distraction. In her mind, she hurled herself against a charred wall, tears streaming down her face, fingers smeared with blood from an artery which would never feel a pulse again. NOOOOOO!

/Remote access initiated. Please state your authorization./ The contact was as much mental as auditory. Familiar feelings of connection cut through her memories, shaking the hold of the Whispers and drawing her, if not back to reality, at least closer to it.

"Saya?"

/Authorization incorrect. Please state your authorization./

"K-1.0-I-don't-speak-otaku."

/Authorization accepted. Welcome Kaname. How may I be of assistance?/

"Saya? Is that really you?"

/Affirmative. Identifier code K-2.0. Current system status, booting. Circuit integrity check under way./

"Who accessed the boot? And could you please utilize Yoshi's non-otaku subroutine?"

/Sure thing, Kaname. Joel-san is here with me, with one other humanoid thermal reading, most likely a person. Should I tell him you're on line?/

"No. I don't want to bother him."

/What operations would you like to access today? Current lack of pilot restricts operations to data transmission and playback./

"Umm, could you show me the lab and Joel-san and his guest?"

/Negative. The lens caps are on. Sorry./

"How about playback, then. Umm, two weeks ago, the trial run we did out to that beach in the Andemans?"

/Sure thing, Kaname. Playback beginning./ The scene before her eyes switched and she found herself looking at the white expanse of a pristine beach off the coast of India. She felt a curious sense of deja vu, gazing around her at the azure waters, breeze-ruffled palms and baked sand. The playback continued, and she walked along the shore. The sound of Yoshi's voice over the long-range comm unit came as a shock, but she listened, achingly, as he spoke to her younger self. They talked about the test data. They worried over the batteries. They speculated on what sort of a vacation they could take to this island, later, when they had spare time. She'd reached the point of playback where she'd found the sand-dollar, when the transmission cut and was replaced with Saya's usual blue interface window.

/Kaname, I'm being attacked. I can't maintain the playback for you./ Kaname felt a sinking dread hit her in the stomach. Instinctively, she tried to sit up, and found she could. Somewhere, very distant, a man's voice was saying something about advanced capabilities. _What?_ Then Saya was speaking again. /Kaname, multiple weapons detected. They're firing. I cannot adequately record the footage./ _They're going to destroy Yoshi's project. Maybe I should just let her go._

"Don't worry about the footage, Saya."

/Pilot in jeopardy./ The voice was as unemotional as ever, but in Kaname's mind, it took on an almost pleading quality. Already, whispers were calculating material stress tolerances and armor resistance. Data streamed into Kaname's awareness of exactly how much (or little) it would take to kill Saya's pilot. What if it were Joel?

"Saya, who is your pilot?" Suddenly, Kaname felt awake, aware and terrified. Adrenaline patched up her differences with her second self, and somewhere, she felt herself crawling out of bed.

/Sorry, reverting to standard communications subroutine. Current pilot: Sergeant Major Melissa Mao./

"Mao?!" _When had MITHRIL gotten involved? _ "Listen, Saya, try to inform her of your capabilities. Tell her that the interface is very similar to the M-9, but that she has no weapons. Running is her best option. The armor you've got will save her from most regular pistol fire, but anything larger could kill her. Oh, and remind her to watch out for hits to those coolant tubes. Can you get her to remove one of the lens caps so I can see what's going on?"

/Affirmative./ There was a moment of disorientation and suddenly, half of her vision contained a view of the roof of the physics building. This in turn was partially obscured by the figure of an M-9 bearing down on Saya, monomolecular cutter in hand. Kaname's foot touched the floor as her mind reeled. _Melissa is going to die!_ Kaname felt her crouch and roll away from a swipe of the giant knife. For one instant, she saw a large helicopter in the air above them, just out of range of the M-9. Just a little too far. Whose helicopter was it?

"Saya, is that helicopter friendly?" There was a pause as the machine put the query to its pilot, and the pilot performed another acrobatic escape. Somewhere in the wash of terror at experiencing, vicariously, David's battle with Goliath, Kaname wondered idly why the M-9 hadn't resorted to guns yet.

/Affirmative. That is the pilot's directional objective./ It was possible. Mao was at least passingly familiar with lambda drivers, and it didn't take much to believe in your own existence strongly enough to continue existing. Kaname wished there were a way she could communicate directly with the pilot. Unfortunately, this wasn't a comm unit; just the remote access headset to K-2.0's A.I., Saya. The world view in the screen spun, and damage reports began to appear in the blue interface window. Something about the letters and numbers of the reports threatened to drag Kaname back under the possessive tide of the Whispers. She could almost feel the pain as the M-9 gripped Saya's left calf with crushing force.

"Saya, please release advanced capabilities. For Kaname Chidori and Sergeant Major Melissa Mao, the distance is not a problem." The view lurched as the M-9 began to drag Saya toward the side of the building.

/Please repeat authorization./

"Please release advanced capabilities. For Kaname Chidori and Sergeant Major Melissa Mao, the distance is not a problem. Activate lambda driver, initiate psi field generation, and upon completion, line-of-sight to the helicopter. Please explain your actions to Sergeant Major Melissa Mao before the jump. Survive, escape, evade."

/Affirmative. Terminating remote access./ The screens went dark, and Kaname found herself effectively blind-folded, standing beside her hospital bed. Memories and realities roiled together in the afterimage of stress. _I'm going to forget this..._

"Thank you, Miss Chidori. Now if you will just follow me?" Someone tugged the headset from her eyes and ears. She saw a gun pointed in her direction, and an unfamiliar face above the collar of a nurse's lab coat. She'd been betrayed. The man smiled, and gestured with the gun toward the door. Her heart pounded in her chest as vicarious danger became all too real, when suddenly, the window behind them burst inward. In the moment's confusion, Kaname dodged past the man and ran out the door.

---

Sousuke received Kurz's news of the ambush as he was repacking the chart and his gear. Kurz himself had retrieved his M-9 and was in the process of chasing the stolen A-S up the side of the physics building. He'd been unable to reach Melissa since her initial transmission.

"She said for you to get you-know-who as far from here as possible, ASAP. I don't know if she meant the airstrip or not, but one way or another, get her out of there and we'll re-connect whenever we can."

"Affirmative. Are you certain I should not meet with you there? Your odds of success would improve greatly." He wound his rappelling line through the figure eight and prepared to go over the side.

"Shit! They've got a helicopter. I've got to go. Just get her out of here or the Captain's going to be royally pissed."

"Understood. Over and out," and he stepped backwards over the side. Three bounces saw him level with Kaname's window. He had an instant to size up the man holding a gun on the now free-standing young woman, before his heels slammed through the glass and he dropped into the room. He caught a glimpse of Kaname running through the door into the clinic corridor, even as he leveled his gun at the assailant. The "nurse" fired first, and Sousuke dove behind the bed, putting the bulk of it between them. Hitting the floor, he shot for the man's legs. Two bullets thudded harmlessly into the floor, before the third impacted the man's left foot.

The man let out a cry, but pulled the bedside table over and ducked behind it, shooting down, through the mattress in Sousuke's direction. Foam and bits of bedding flew. Sousuke rolled sideways, away from the fire, then pulled himself out from under the bed, perpendicular to it. Emerging behind the side table, his eyes met the "nurse's" for an instant before he dispatched the surprised man with a shot to the head. He heard yelling in the hallway, but paused momentarily to grab the strange headset from where the man had dropped it, and the chart from the end of Kaname's bed. He shoved both into the pack on his back before running in pursuit of his true quarry.

In the hallway, there was pandemonium. Patients were screaming in confusion and the nurses were trying to keep everyone in their rooms while attempting to get a hold of security. Guessing Kaname would run via the most direct route, Sousuke ran straight down the hall, past the nurses station and out the clinic's front door. He dismissed the elevators in favor of the stairs automatically, and two minutes later emerged onto the quiet street in front of the complex. There was no sign of Kaname. Might she still be in the building, hoping to hide rather than run? Such a strategy seemed more passive than was her nature. He tried to remember the most direct route to the subway from this clinic. It seemed reasonable she would try to use public transportation to put distance between herself and the threat. The quickest way lead back through the garden behind the facility, so he turned and ran back, through a breezeway to the small park in the center of the four building complex.

It was difficult to distinguish colors in the growing darkness, but he thought he spied a flash of blue on the far side of the park. He'd forgotten how fast Kaname could run when she felt like it. Keeping watch to either side for possible further attackers, Sousuke ran in the direction of the sighting. Police sirens could be heard in the distance, possibly responding to the incident at the clinic, but possibly not. It was a large city, after all. Within the park, sounds had a strangely muted quality, and the feeling of tranquil nature seemed decidedly incongruous against the charged emotions of the chase. He took a direct path through the trees at the center of the park, and was surprised, upon emerging to find Kaname crouched behind a shrub, her back to him, assessing the breezeway through the far building toward the street. It seemed unusually cautious for her.

How best to approach? She was breathing heavily and did not appear to have heard his approach. He briefly considered simply knocking her over from behind and hand-cuffing her, but something in his conscience wouldn't condone that idea. She was scared, injured, and most importantly, his friend. Switching the gun to his left hand, he cautiously approached her, stretched out his right hand, and grasped her right shoulder.

"Ka--" was as far as he got. With an agility he'd never suspected, she whirled counterclockwise and up, driving her left elbow into his side and following it with her right knee as both her hands grabbed his gun arm and twisted the weapon from his grasp. In the space of an instant, he found himself on the ground, Kaname's knees on either side of his chest and his own weapon pointed at his head. Her eyes, as she looked at him held no trace of recognition, but rather a curious emptiness. Her finger tightened on the trigger and he felt a burning pain in his ear as a bullet grazed him on the way to the ground. In that instant, he rolled beneath her and shoved himself away, preparing to disarm and subdue her, when suddenly her eyes widened and she stared at the gun in her hand.

"Glock...18?" She looked at him in confusion and a tear ran unnoticed down her right cheek. Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she fainted.

---

Kurz dug through the wreckage of the (once again) demolished physics lab. A few tries on his comm unit had pinpointed Mao's location (or at least her comm unit's) under a collapsed support column. He had to get her out of here before the cops swarmed in and MITHRIL's cover was blown. For all that they'd had negotiations with higher school officials, the detection of MITHRIL soldiers or technology in the aftermath of a battle was a big no no. And if Kurz concentrated really hard on that thought, the dreadful guilt of having lost the damn project and failed to rescue his team leader could almost be sidelined a little. How the hell was he going to explain it? He'd had that sucker right in his hand. It was right there, then it was gone. There was no way that thing could have broken his grip, so how? He tugged at a slightly larger chunk of concrete and heard a moan.

"Is that you, Melissa?" He quickened his pace, pulling pieces of concrete and plaster from the area and brushing dust from the sergeant major's emerging form.

"Weber, if you don't stop pawing me, you're gonna lose that hand." Mao's face was covered in blood and dust, one eye swollen shut. More blood was matted in her hair and her breathing sounded terrible, but she was unmistakably alive. "God, I could use a beer or five. Did you stop them?"

"They got away. Helicopter on the roof." His jaw was set in a grim line as he finished freeing up her legs and helped her to sit.

"Shit," she winced, whether in pain or disappointment, he couldn't tell. "And you didn't shoot them down because of the risk of civilian casualties, right?"

"Yeah. How bad did I screw up?"

"Pretty bad. Not that I can say much." She looked around the room. "Those assholes got the lab assistant, too, and all I could do was sit here under a bunch of concrete." A fit of coughing overtook her as she choked on the dust. When she finally finished, she turned back to Kurz. "Well, there's nothing more to do here. You wanna help me up?" He obliged and half helped, half carried her out of the building into the evening air.

"We should probably get you to a hospital. You look like hell." The autumn moonlight was less than kind to the Sergeant Major, and while Kurz was well aware of how tough she was, there were limits.

"Screw that. There's less paperwork to fill out on the de Danaan. I can make it there just fine," she coughed, spit, and then glared at him in challenge.

"Don't be an idiot. Could we at least hit the ER and get you patched up before we go?" He put on his most charming smile.

"Whatever." She allowed him to help her into the car she'd driven earlier that day, before pulling out her comm unit. "Urzu-7, this is Urzu-2, do you copy?"

"Urzu-7 here."

"Status report. Did you get the asset?" she managed before snarling at Kurz as he spun them somewhat faster than necessary around the parking garage ramps.

"Affirmative." Something in his voice sounded wrong.

"How is she?" Part of Mao wondered if she even wanted to know, given how this evening was progressing thus far.

"Unconscious." Well, it could have been worse.

"Is she one some sort of medication?"

"Negative. I believe her medications were all stopped this afternoon." Still that slight hesitation in his voice, as though there was something he was omitting.

"So what happened? Give us the rundown."

Sousuke gave a brief but detailed report of the events of the evening, but hesitated as he described the incident in the park. Finally, he simply said it: "at which point, she attempted to shoot me."

Kurz chuckled, "I've heard of some bad reunions with ex-girlfriends, but that's got to take the cake. So what, did you clock her?"

"Negative. She attempted to shoot me, was overwhelmed and fainted. I've placed her in the carry compartment and we are currently en route to the air field."

"Are you injured, Sergeant?" Mao shot Kurz a look to silence him.

"Negative. She missed. I do not believe she truly intended to kill me."

"I've got to teach that girl how to shoot," murmured Kurz, seconds before Mao's fist struck him squarely in the shoulder.


	6. Chapter 6

a/n: hmm. Well, I really don't like this chapter, so any suggestions/criticisms would be welcome. Still, at least things are moving along. Oh, and the initial quote is from the Princess Bride, which is not mine, etc. etc.

Chapter 6.

"_We'll never survive."_

"_Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has."_

Kaname was mumbling. She had been mumbling when Sousuke had finally reached the airstrip. She'd continued mumbling as he gently removed her from the carry compartment and carried her to the aircraft. He'd felt the breath of her words against his neck as he fastened her into one of the seats in the cargo bay, but they never rose above a whisper, and her eyes remained closed. He sighed. She mumbled.

The 'plane was scheduled to take off in half an hour, and although he was reasonably certain of the security, he did not like waiting in such an exposed position. The attacks had been too well coordinated, and the thought that the enemy du jour had better information and stronger numbers in this area did nothing to ease his mind. It would help if he knew who they were up against, but there simply had not been time to attempt to take the nurse prisoner for questioning. And now, here they sat, waiting.

Restless, he left the 'plane to make another check of the perimeter. It was roughly ten o'clock at night, but the airport remained busy. The sound of jet engines was a constant hum over the landscape of baggage carts, catering trucks, passenger walkways and other miscellaneous ground crew. The two MITHRIL soldiers assigned guard duty were walking a casual-seeming patrol, while the 'plane's pilot and navigator could be seen in the cockpit chatting. No one seemed to be paying unusual attention to the cargo 'plane and there were no suspicious vehicles circling. In short, there was nothing out of the ordinary to provide even the slightest distraction from the monotony of waiting. Sousuke sighed again before reminding himself of the truism that a soldier's life is composed primarily of hurrying up and waiting. His presence here was serving no purpose, so he returned to the cargo bay to see if by some chance, Kaname had snapped out of it.

He found her shivering. It was not particularly cold in the aircraft, but then, she was only wearing silk pajamas. He placed a hand to her forehead and noted uneasily the cold and clammy quality of her skin. Shock? A quick check of her pulse revealed it to be high and thready. Not good. He was about to see if he could track down a blanket for her when her hand suddenly locked on his wrist and her eyes opened.

"_probabilityoflossbetweeninitiationpointandterminus0.036" _Her words made no sense to him, but her eyes seemed to be asking for something.

"Kaname, you are currently aboard a MITHRIL cargo transport. I retrieved you from the clinic and brought you here under orders from my commanding officer, and we will be departing shortly." He truly hoped she could understand him. Was there some hint of acknowledgment in those brown depths? For a moment, he was almost certain she was going to respond, but then her gaze clouded and took on a horrifyingly familiar distance.

"_initialtestingwilllikelyincludelongdistanceforaysandattemptedaccessofthedestinationlibrary. espionageandsabotagearetobeexpected,"_ she sighed, and her eyes closed, her body slumping back in the seat. For several minutes he sat frozen in place, hoping she might come around again, but finally, her even breathing convinced him she was asleep. He stood, reluctantly disengaging his wrist from her hand. A quick perusal of the crew compartment produced a pillow and several blankets. Returning to her side, Sousuke soon had the young woman cocooned in dark blue wool. He attempted to cushion her neck with the small pillow, but as he lifted her head, she shifted and leaned it against his shoulder instead.

"It's good to see you again, Kaname," he murmured into her hair. He didn't see the ghost of a smile that curved her lips.

---

"Does it hurt?" Joel tried to focus on the face floating above him. For some reason, it simply wouldn't work. His eyes felt heavy, his throat felt dry and a shifting nausea threatened to overwhelm his stomach at any moment. He tried to answer, but taking a deep breath, felt a stabbing pain through his abdomen, and coughed several times. The face moved further away and he could hear murmurs as of two people talking.

"I'm sorry for your current situation, Mr. Vermeer. You see, your associates Mr. Chikitaka and Ms. Chidori were unavailable for consultation, so I'm afraid I'm going to need to ask you a few questions. It was most unfortunate that that security guard became involved." The voice seemed reasonable, almost soothing, and it didn't surprise Joel in the least that the speaker used fluent Dutch.

"Water?" He gave up trying to focus and closed his eyes, but the taste of blood in his mouth had started a thread of fear winding through his thoughts.

"I'm sorry. That wouldn't be a very good idea in your present condition. The I.V.'s will keep you hydrated, I assure you. Now, could we begin with your name, just for the record." The evenly spoken words threatened to send him drifting into slumber again, but the pain wouldn't allow it. Why does he want me to say my name?

"Joel Kirkegarde Vermeer." Now that he thought about it, he could vaguely feel the tape at his elbow, holding the I.V. port in place and pulling at the hairs on his arm.

"Excellent. And how long have you been working with Mr. Chikitaka?"

"Two years and change." Had it really been that long?

"And how long have you known Ms. Chidori?" In the back of his mind, something stirred uneasily at this question, but he couldn't quite remember any real reason not to answer.

"A little over a year. Chikitaka introduced us."

"Would you consider her to be your friend?" Was there something familiar about this voice?

"Yes, but she's better friends with Chikitaka."

"Ah, yes, they were lovers, correct?" The nagging uneasiness increased a hundred fold. What was this guy getting at? Joel tried to hesitate, but somehow found himself answering anyway.

"Not really. Well, maybe a little, but mostly they were collaborators."

"She assisted him with his research?" The voice was still smooth, but an edge of interest and excitement seemed to color it. _Wait a minute. What had Chikitaka said? 'Joel, whatever we do, we've got to keep Kaname's secret. Her life could be in danger.' Her life-- _

"Who are you?" He felt his heartbeat jump as fear and memories flooded back.

"Now, now, let's keep this as uncomplicated as we can, shall we? It really would be better to let me ask the questions."

"I'm not telling you anything else until you tell me who you are." He wanted the words to sound confident, but pain tore at his insides and all he could manage was a pitiful whisper.

"I think you'll find, Mr. Vermeer, that you are not in any position to negotiate. I'm sorry to inform you that you've sustained injuries of a life-threatening nature. Now for the moment, you are stable, but that can easily change. So let's discuss Ms. Chidori and the project in a reasonable, adult fashion, hmm? Or would you like tonight to be your last on earth?" He felt something press into his stomach, and the pain increased to an excruciating intensity. A faint moan that should have been a scream sounded between his lips, and stars flickered on the backs of his eyelids. After a moment, the pressure subsided and the pain eased. _This can't be happening, this can't be happening, this can't be happening... _"There, there, Mr. Vermeer. Now, then. I can be positively charitable, if you're willing to cooperate. Perhaps we'll ignore Ms. Chidori for a moment while you tell me the code to decipher these notes we found in your satchel."

A tear leaked between Joel's closed eyelids. _How had they found the satchel? _ He'd tried so hard to hide it. He'd promised Chikitaka. He'd sworn to keep her secret. If the wrong people knew about this, no one would be safe. _But I'm just a lab assistant._ "No."

"What you really mean is: 'not yet'."

---

"While I'm very disappointed with the results of last night's mission, I acknowledge that our personnel did the best they could. They were simply outnumbered, and with insufficient prerogative to take more drastic measures. We didn't know the full capabilities of the A-S we're trying to capture. And we still don't." Tessa was discussing the mission reports with Commander Mardukas and Lt. Commander Kalinin in her office. The captain sat wearily behind her desk, several faxes arranged in front of her, while the two officers sat in chairs across from her. It had been a very early morning for all of them, and now a headache was threatening to drive her to distraction.

"We have to know what we're up against. If Chidori has been effectively brought within our custody, it is imperative that any information she might have be recovered immediately." Mardukas was mission oriented as always. Kalinin had been quieter throughout the meeting, what with the Urzu team falling under his command.

"It's not as simple as that. She's non-responsive. The charts Sgt. Sagara faxed to us along with his report of her behavior post-retrieval all indicate that she is in no state to tell us what we need to know."

"That's not entirely true, Madame Captain, and you are fully aware of that fact." She stared at him. Why did Kalinin have to bring this up? Mardukas was quick to catch his meaning.

"The Lt. Commander is correct, Captain. We've dealt with these cases before. Simply have her transferred to the facility at Palau-benu." His words fell like glacial ice in the stillness of the room.

"So they can drug her consciousness away, extract her memories and leave her as some shell of a human being, chanting out science and waiting to die?!" Her voice broke, and her subordinates politely looked away while she struggled to recover her composure. After a moment, she looked up. "I know what MITHRIL high command is going to ask for. I am looking for options, gentlemen. Kaname is a friend, and after all she's done for us, the crew of the de Danaan owes her."

"The longest you're going to be able to stall them is one week. The only factor in our favor is that we don't know precisely how great a threat this new weapon poses, so there is some room for argument as to how critical a few days will be. In addition, we can suppress the recordings from Sgt. Weber's A-S. In order to do that, we're going to have to lay blame for the mission failure squarely on the Sergeant – call it incompetence, failure to record, something like that – and take appropriate disciplinary measures." Mardukas sounded almost pleased at the last part, since he was still quite convinced the Sergeant in question should have blown the whole thing out of the sky.

"Kalinin?"

"I would recommend that you evaluate Miss Chidori in person. With your aptitudes, you may be able to determine how long a true recovery would take, if such is even possible. It may be that too much of her mind is already gone, in which case, contingency plans become unnecessary. You could rendezvous with them at our base in Okinawa, and fly with them as far as Hololulu. That would give you sufficient time to perform the evaluation and determine a follow-up plan. It has the added benefit of secrecy. From our current location we could have you in Okinawa in five hours."

"Thank you for your suggestions. I believe I'll employ both of them. The de Danaan will proceed to the eastern coast of Japan, and pick up Weber and Mao, while I fly to Okinawa. Commander Madukas," she caught his eye and they exchanged an icy gaze.

"Captain?"

"You have the conn. I'll expect you to maintain radio silence from the moment you pick up the rest of the Urzu team until such time as I contact you. Any incoming calls from MITHRIL high command are to have technical difficulties and be ignored. Understood?"

"Aye, Captain."

"Commander Kalinin, you will inform Mao and Weber of those portions of the plan pertaining to them. Beyond that, no one on board is to know." She stood and her subordinates snapped to attention. "Gentlemen, dismissed."

---

"Why did you tell Joel? You promised." She stood in the center of the lab, shoulders rigid, anger embodied in her every feature. Yoshi pushed the headset from his eyes and tried to meet her gaze. Failing, he looked at the floor.

"They threatened to kill you, Kaname. They said if they couldn't have the notes, there was no point in allowing me to finish the work, and that maybe I needed an example of how serious they are. Joel's memory--"

"I know all about Joel's memory! That's why we agreed not to tell him. You really think that giving them a stack of notes is going to get any of us out of this alive?" She saw the impact of her words on the scientist, and winced inwardly. He was only a scientist, after all. He lived in a rational, peaceful world of numbers, and although violence had touched his family before, his mind was not the type to understand how evil worked. _Strange that my mind seems to..._

"I'm so sorry." His eyes were pleading with her. "I just thought if I gave them something, maybe they'd leave us alone long enough to--"

"To WHAT? What were you going to do? We are in so far over our heads here."

"I don't really know," he sighed, and took her hands in his. "I just know I can't let them hurt you. I got you into this and whatever it takes, I'll get you out."

"I got MYSELF into this. Whatever you think, Chikitaka Yoshi-san, I am not some pawn to your will." She pulled her hands free and began to pace the lab. "What we need is some protection. We just have to get out of range of Vrees' operatives. If they can't find us, they can't hurt us." Her usual confidence was kicking in and Yoshi watched in admiration as she worked it out. "Obviously, whatever solution we find will have to be good for you and me and Joel. We need a hiding place, and then we need somebody to take down Vrees so that they can't hurt us and they can't get their hands on Saya." She paused, and then a rueful smile spread across her face. "You're from money, right? How much do you have in the bank, Yoshi?"

"About thirty million yen. Why?"

"Because that plus Saya might be enough to buy us the services of a certain mercenary organization." She smiled, then frowned. "Although it would probably mean admitting to that otaku that I need his help and actually think he'd be useful for once..." Then she grinned. "I can't wait to see the look on Tessa's face when she finds out I figured out a way to track her precious submarine." She stopped just short of rubbing her hands together, her glee mitigated by Yoshi's nervousness.

"Can we really trust this MITHRIL group?" There was hope in his voice, but also weariness. Kaname responded with a hug, holding him tightly and trying to let her arms convey her certainty.

"Maybe not the entire group, but the ones I know are friends. They may make life absolutely insane for normal people, but how much crazier could it really be for us?" She eased her grip a little and smiled at him.

"And you'd get to see him again." Yoshi's voice was wistful.

"That was always the plan." But somehow, she couldn't meet his eyes as she said it.

"I'm not sure I still believe in the plan."

"Yoshi, I..."

"It's okay," he interrupted. "A deal's a deal, and if your friend can get us out of this, he's a better man than I am." His words were unnaturally bright. "But Kaname, whatever happens, I do love you." He kissed her forehead, then pulled away, resettling the headset over his eyes. "As long as you're here, let's go ahead and run that final test. She's powered down, so start with external visual before you get in. Just give me two minutes to go check the circuit breakers."

She stared at Saya as he left the room, her emotions in a whirl. She could almost hear the Whispers as she tried to concentrate of the visual checklist. _ He loves me... operationoflambdacontainmentcontingentuponemotionalstabilityandfocus..._

---

The hold of the aircraft was decidedly noisy. The constant scream of the engines reduced only slightly by the layers of aluminum and minimal insulation between them and the passengers. Even so, Tessa didn't really hear them. She'd come aboard in a crewman's jumpsuit, with Commander's stripes and a baseball cap, purportedly taking a hop to Honolulu. That she was one of only three passengers was a little odd, but the pilot and aircrew had long since learned not to question such things. MITHRIL was all about need to know.

Tessa waited until they were in the air to address Sergeant Sagara. During takeoff, she'd noted with a twinge of jealousy how carefully the sergeant had protected Kaname from the regular jolts and bumps of ascending. Ah well. Some things simply were not meant to be. Of greater concern was the way that even when her eyes were open, the blue-haired young woman seemed unaware of her surroundings. Finally, altitude was established, and the cockpit door was locked with orders to the crew to stay out of the hold.

"Has she been like this the entire time, Sergeant?" Sousuke, unable to stand what with Kaname's head once again resting on his shoulder, did his best to sit at attention.

"Negative. She has occasionally spoken, however incoherently."

"They had her on sedatives to pretty effectively shut down her subconscious at that clinic. According to that chart, she was responding to them. Unfortunately, long-term, that kind of thing turns people into psychotics. I'm hoping we can avoid that with her. Has she said anything about that A-S of hers?"

"Not that I could discern. She seems to be speaking of some sort of technology when she speaks, however, I am not certain whether it has to do with that A-S particularly. Are you here to oversee a transfer to Palau-Benu?" His eyes were hard, and she was rather glad that was the diametric opposite of her goal.

"No. I'm hoping to avoid that," she smiled with feigned sweetness. "I suppose I should warn you, Sergeant, that I'm bending MITHRIL directives in being here. We need to know what she knows, but I want to give her the chance to tell us of her own free will."

"Understood. There is one thing you should see," he pulled the Mediterranean chart from his pocket and handed it to her. She pondered it for several moments. Her initial reaction was to feel violated. There was a very simple way Kaname could have attained this information. _That conniving, eavesdropping... wait._ She looked more closely at the chart. _I wasn't on board the de Danaan on those two days... _Her inward sigh of relief at not having had her thoughts spied upon was replaced by perplexity. _But if she wasn't tracking me, then how did she figure it out, and more importantly, who else knows?_ The situation was getting decidedly murky. Did the enemy now have this information? Mardukas would have to be warned. "It is probable that whoever has the A-S is capable of continuing to track the de Danaan, if they are not already doing so." Sousuke restated her thoughts.

"Then we'd better get started as soon as possible. Please watch us both closely. If either of us appears to lose consciousness, I need you to strike that person hard, got it?"

"Captain?"

"It's a sort of safety valve. It may not work on Kaname, but I at least have trained sufficiently that such an external stimulus should allow me to break contact."

"Understood. And Tessa," he caught her gaze and her heart skipped a beat, "please be careful. De Danaan cannot afford to lose her captain."

She smiled, with an inward smirk at her own hopeless heart, "Of course, Sergeant."

---

_Titanium to steel ratio should not exceed 1:3, next component..._

_Please, please let me go. I don't want to create weapons. I don't want to do this. This is not me._

_This is more me than anything I have done before. I was born to bring this technology to the world. And only I can offer myself oblivion; an escape from the past._

_But it will kill people. I AM NOT A KILLER!_

_no. wait. I am a killer. A killer is one who kills and I have killed. Oh my god... _- a face turning to ash as its atoms were ripped apart.

_Oblivion. Surrender, and we will never have to think about that night again._

_NO! --_ and suddenly, she was at war. Kaname (blue hair loose to her hips, high school uniform scorched and tattered but still bright) holding a knife to the throat of Kaname (black hair bound beneath a pilot's helmet, black jump leotard torn and bloodstained), whose gun dug into her ribs.

**WAIT! **

The two Kanames paused on their rippling battlefield to stare at the newcomer, taking in the details: long silver hair, pressed MITHRIL uniform, sensible pumps. As she approached, the Kanames dissolved into each other.

_Tessa? _ Then she was sinking into the words, falling into the formulae.

Tessa felt herself begin to plunge as well, and with an effort of will, managed to stay at the surface, deliberately blocking out all thoughts of the calculations, theories and schematics which swirled just below her "feet."

**Kaname. You have to come back with me. You have to tell me the things I need to know. You cannot stay in this state.** She reached "down" to try to grasp Kaname's "hand," but felt it slip away, further into the rippling ether.

_If I go back, I'll be nothing but a weapon. I'll teach other people how to destroy the world, won't I? I will not do that. _The image of Kaname, leotard-clad and bleeding, turned weary eyes on her one-time friend and rival.

**Your knowledge could save people too – science by itself is neither good nor evil. But you have to come back. You're fighting a war on too many fronts, right now. You cannot resist the Whispers if half of you wants the soullessness they offer. You cannot protect yourself from your real enemies if you cannot come to your senses.** She reached for Kaname's hand again, but as she did, the terrible guilt and sadness of her friend began to flood her own senses, and she felt her psychic self begin to sink. **Please, Kaname. If you do not come back, the Whispers will ride you. You will still be a weapon and others will still be able to use you, but your life will be over. You must face your fears and return. Or have you really become a coward, too afraid to fight to save yourself?** Tessa felt the malice in her last words was not entirely her own, and began to worry how far lost she herself was becoming in Kaname's psyche.

_Can you make the Whispers stop?_

**I can give you four days. Then I will need to know what they know. But if you can put the memories that are hurting you in the past where they belong, you may have a hope of controlling the Whispers again. **Hope flared between them, and the psychic image of Kaname began to swim towards the "surface."

_Can you make them forgive me?_

**Whispers don't accuse, Kaname. You're going to have to forgive yourself. ** Then she felt the overwhelming sadness flood them both, as Kaname's own self doubt and hatred of what she'd done became a maelstrom of razor-sharp waves.

I will fight. Four days. Now leave, before I hurt you too. With that, Tessa felt herself half drawn, half pushed from the resonance, but even as it dissolved, she felt/heard a ghostly whisper: _Who could ever forgive a killer? _ With an effort, she made a final reply: **Another killer. Trust Sousuke.** Then she felt herself alone in her head, limbs rubbery with exhaustion and breath coming in gasps. She opened her eyes and held up a hand.

"It's over, Sergeant. I think I'm going to take a little nap now," and she slumped in her seat.


	7. Chapter 7

a/n: Sorry for the delay everyone. The good news is I finally have a beta reader (a thousand thanks, skychan). Many thanks to those of you still reading.

Chapter 7

_The vastness of space is as nothing compared to the gulf between "you" and "I."_

In her mind, she was lying on the lab floor. Her coat was bundled into a makeshift pillow, maps providing a poor excuse for padding between the concrete and her protesting back. Even so, she felt as though she could sleep for at least another five hours this way. Then someone was shaking her shoulder.

"Kaname, wake up."

She curled in on herself, scrunching her eyes more tightly shut against the possibility of opening, and stolidly ignored the shaking.

"Kaname, you need to wake up now."

_Damn voice, damn shaking, damn whoever the hell is trying to wake me up – I just want one more hour. Damn workaholic, morning-person scientists_. "Yoshi, if you honestly think I'm going to get up now, after a session like that one, you've got another thing coming," and she pulled the pillow—_wait, hadn't that been a coat?_--over her face.

"Kaname, it is 0630 and the Captain gave me instructions to see to it that you followed a regular schedule and received plenty of exercise."

"But we don't run until three... the _Captain_?!" Her eyes snapped open, and she rolled over to see the one and only Sousuke Sagara kneeling beside her sleeping bag, about to shake her shoulder once more. "SOUSUKE?!" Her hand was automatically feeling around for something that should have been close but wasn't. Failing to find the halisen, it reported back odd details to her brain, such as nylon sleeping bag and rough wooden floor.

"Kaname," he acknowledged. "Now that you're awake, I recommend changing into suitable jogging attire and shoes. I believe Kyoko packed some of each," he said, turning to one side a drawing a large duffel bag – her own large duffel bag – from the corner and setting it in front of her. She stared at it uncomprehendingly, then looked at him again, not remotely sure what she wanted to ask first. He spoke before she could decide. "I will wait outside for you for fifteen minutes. If you fail to report in within that time, I will return to assist you." And with that, he turned and exited the room through a door off to her left.

The rough, wooden door had not fully closed before Kaname began digging in the bag for the clothes she'd need. Heaven knew Sousuke would be punctual and she didn't want him catching her half-dressed. Besides that, her pajamas were filthy and clung to her skin with the accumulated salt and sweat of eighteen hours of travel by air and sea. She stripped them off with distaste, hurling them to a far corner of the room. Dumping the duffel out on the sleeping bag, she quickly found shorts, socks, fresh underthings and a T-shirt, which she changed into with alacrity. Then, feeling an odd twinge of contrariness, she sat back on her sleeping bag and made an inventory of the rest of the bag.

Clothes (chosen with taste and practicality, thanks to Kyoko), three pairs of shoes, toiletries (she made quick use of the deodorant), MP3 player, Sousuke's letters and other contents of the "secret" box (what was Kyoko THINKING?!), bikini, towel, sunscreen, cell phone (hmm, I wonder if I should call someone), hair things, and one of Kyoko's many digital cameras. There was a post-it stuck on the camera, but a twinge of uneasiness struck her at what sort of pictures Kyoko might have sent, and she laid it aside, unread.

Kaname had returned everything to the pack and was gingerly brushing her hair when the door opened to admit a charmingly worried-looking Sousuke. Seeing her lingering over her hair, however, the Sergeant's expression hardened.

"There is no need to style your hair. Our first activity is to be a five-K jog."

She neither stopped nor looked in his direction, but he could almost hear a smile in her voice. "If I don't pull it back, it's going to tug on my scalp and endanger my stitches while I'm jogging. I'm almost done, anyway." So saying, she finished re-braiding it, and secured it with a rubber band. "See?"

"Very well," he murmured, holding the door for her as she picked up her shoes and headed for the porch. The structure turned out to be a one-room hut with a straw roof and a porch across the entire front. Inside, it had been fairly dark, but standing on the porch, Kaname could see the sun sparkling on waves a few hundred feet away, across a sandy beach. The morning clouds were gilded pink in the dawn, and behind the hut, tropical vegetation rustled in the island breeze.

"Where are we?" _And why don't I already know our exact coordinates? Then again, this is the first morning in three months I haven't woken up to them..._

"Na'ui Vavanau: a decommissioned MITHRIL munitions testing facility. The island is currently uninhabited." He chose a spot on the beach and began stretching. Kaname took a moment to admire his flexibility and wonder whether he'd always looked that good in running shorts before beginning her own stretches.

"Umm, Sousuke, my memory is a little weird this morning, but didn't I shoot you?" Her voice trembled involuntarily and she scowled at herself. _After all, he's here talking to you, and ghosts don't have shoulders like that._

"You shot my ear," he turned so she could see the bit of gauze taped there. Then, noting her concern, he clarified, "you changed your aim at the last moment and I was grazed. It is not a problem."

"Not a problem. Right." She stared at her shoes. _A face, burning to ash..._

"I was impressed by your evasion, however. Have you been studying self-defense long?"

"Huh?" She stood. He began jogging down the beach at what for him must have been a rather slow pace and she matched him easily. "No, only about four months or so. Yoshi can't fight his way out of a paper bag, so Joel and I figured we'd do our best to make up for him. Just in case."

"Chikitaka-san is dead, Kaname." His tone was without inflection, simply a statement of fact. It felt like a hammer to the chest, but Kaname kept jogging, kept her breathing even, and willed herself to let it go. It wasn't as though she didn't know. Still, hearing it aloud and in so matter-of-fact a tone hurt. They jogged in silence for a while.

"When a comrade is lost, it is often difficult to accept. Each person will eventually develop his or her own method of coping, however such methods generally only become clear with repeat exposure to the circumstance." His words were almost too quiet to hear against the surf and the breeze.

"I don't want to talk about it." Her words were clipped with more than shortness of breath, and she suddenly found the pace slow and confining. Driving her feet harder against the sand and stretching her legs, she darted ahead of him. She ran hard, forcing her surprised muscles into a sprint. Her thighs began to ache and her throat rasped with the roughness of her breathing, but she continued to run, until the rhythm of it replaced her memories and the pattern of footfalls obliterated the warnings of her senses. She waited for the Whispers to intrude. But they didn't, and she remembered Tessa. _Whispers don't accuse..._

Ten minutes later, her legs finally gave out and she hit the sand, gasping. Sousuke was not far behind her, and she listened to his approach through the heaving of her own lungs. _Damn him. _ Admittedly, sprinting had been a dumb thing to do, but so was jogging at dawn on a beach on some deserted island. Come to think of it, it was rather strange to be on a deserted island with only Sousuke. It did not seem like the sort of scenario Tessa would approve. She smiled a little at the thought. Strange how easy it was to ignore the present in favor of rivalries of the past. And then he was jogging past.

"You don't have to talk, but you do have to run," he said, as he continued. "I'd recommend a more reasonable pace." With a growl, she hauled herself up and chased after him.

---

"It's troublesome that the initial run damaged our pilot to such a degree, and cost us as talented an agent as Hoshida-san."

"Regrettable, but hardly an unfair trade. How is the questioning of the lab assistant progressing?"

"Fairly. Mr. Leuyenduyck is quite impressed with the young man's fortitude, but remains confident that he will be able to extract the cypher from him before he expires."

"Interesting, don't you think, that MITHRIL chose to protect the girlfriend?"

"She is clearly the key to a production model."

"Herself, or her notes, yes. In the mean time, however, I believe the information we have and the prototype at our disposal provide us with certain unparalleled resources to exploit."

"Indeed?"

"I've decided to put MITHRIL's flagship on the market, coordinates available to the highest bidder. Saya, that dear A.I., seems to have a certain preoccupation with tracking the ship, and seems more than willing to reveal its location to her newest pilot."

"I'll see to it that Agent Maerek is awakened to consult with her for you. Will we be posting to the usual site?"

"No, I believe this affair should be black-tie. Engraved invitations to our most lucrative clients, coordinates only, capture is up to them."

"I'll arrange it immediately."

---

Sousuke had kept them hard at work all day. The jogging had been followed by a break for energy bars before a thorough round of cleaning the quarters and setting up the station's generator and desalinization tanks . That hadn't taken long (the munitions storage and testing facilities were state-of-the-art, but the living space was tiny and basic), and then he'd taken her on a hike through the jungle. A little after three o'clock in the afternoon, they'd returned to the station for lunch/dinner. It was over too quickly and then Sousuke was inviting Kaname back outside for some tai chi.

"There's nothing wrong with my balance, Sousuke," she commented. It was nearly five and Kaname felt as though her legs were made of rubber. "I'm just tired." She'd made a rather graceless tumble to the ground and hadn't bothered getting back up. Sousuke looked for a moment as though he were going to order her back to her feet, but then seemed to change his mind and sat beside her.

"Do you feel at all light-headed? Are you experiencing any auditory hallucinations?" He seemed genuinely concerned, and for a moment, Kaname was strongly reminded of the time he'd been similarly worried about her "circulatory problems." Huh. If only this were that simple.

"I'm okay. The voices aren't back. Whatever Tessa gave me works like a charm." Which reminded her... "How is everybody from the de Danaan, anyway? And why aren't we there?" She smiled thinking of Kurz and Mao and the various friendly crewpeople she'd met once so long ago.

"At last report, they were well, although the current situation is highly changeable," he said, the last part more than half to himself. They both stared out at the ocean in the growing twilight.

"Did Melissa get away okay? I tried to help her, but it can be really rough if you don't know what to expect." Kaname thought of her own experiences jumping and worried a bit more. "Was she injured?"

"Sergeant Major Mao was injured sufficiently that her treatment prevented her from making the rendezvous, however the Captain informed me that she and Sergeant Weber will be joining us here in two days." At which point it clicked. "How did you try to help her?"

"Oh that. Well, somebody brought me the remote access headset, and Saya said that her pilot was Mao and the camera showed her under attack from an M-9, so I freed up the access and helped her escape." She caught his expression and became irritated. "Well, she did get away, right?"

"Mao was pinned under a support column in the lab by heavy gunfire. She sustained injuries to her eye, ribs and limbs. The pilot of your A-S was an enemy agent. The A-S itself is presumed to be in their possession, having mysteriously eluded Kurz's M-9."

It was her second horrible realization of the day, and it hurt almost as much as the first. _I helped the enemy. I'm a killer and an idiot. And now they have Saya, and the killing was for nothing and Yoshi died for nothing and there's nothing I can do about anything without screwing it up more and Melissa's hurt and Kurz failed because of me and... and... _

She noticed that Sousuke was still speaking, but she didn't hear whatever it was he had to say. In her mind, she was running back over the fight with the M-9, imagining it from Kurz's point of view. Her perceptions were fuzzy, though, as if something in her brain simply wouldn't work. She tried to remember how that evening had ended, and could only slightly recall something about a man with a gun and running in the park and shooting Sousuke. What if she'd killed him too?

_But it's not all my fault. If Yoshi were here, it would be at least partly his fault. He shouldn't have helped me and I shouldn't have pushed myself for him and none of this should ever have happened. And if that damn Sousuke hadn't left in the first place..._she was getting angry now. The waves seemed impudently lovely and the beach mocked her sense of how the world should look when one is vexed with it. Ignoring Sousuke and the numbness of her knees, Kaname stood and started walking purposefully back towards the station. She didn't want to look at pretty tropical sunsets or listen to quasi-understanding otakus. She wanted food and solitude – _and something to hit _– and above all, for the world to stop getting worse every time she looked at it. She heard Sousuke following her. She stopped.

"Stay here, Sousuke. I am not exercising any more today." She did not turn to look at him, but she heard his footfalls. "I don't want to talk, and if you come any closer, I swear I'm going to hit you." The footsteps ceased. She continued walking, lost in thought, but came up short when upon reaching the porch of the station, she discovered Sousuke, waiting for her. She glared up at him, but he merely opened the station door and held it in invitation.

She stormed inside and walked to the counter which lined one of the walls. There was a hot plate, and she plugged it in. A quick rummage of the cupboard turned up a kettle, which she filled with water and set to boil. Their food seemed to consist primarily of energy bars and MREs, but there was a small package of tea bags. She set out a cup and then stood watching the kettle, steadfastly ignoring the proverb.

For his part, Sousuke quietly set up a collapsible table in the center of the room and arranged a portable electric lamp on top of it. The sleeping bags were unrolled, folded in half and pressed into service as cushions, finally, he ventured into Kaname's self-claimed kitchen space to dig a pair of bowls from the cupboard. These he placed on the table along with napkins and spoons, before setting two MREs beside the hot plate on the counter. Kaname grabbed both and put them in a pot which she subsequently filled with water. The kettle sang, and was deftly exchanged for the pot. A second cup was set on the counter and two teabags were put to use. The cook of the moment set a steaming cup at each "place" on the table, before sitting before hers.

Sousuke produced some sort of military periodical from his packs and began to read. Kaname debated viewing the images on Kyoko's camera, when her eye spied something else amongst the packs in the corner. In an instant, she was across the room, drawing a paper fan from its resting place. She turned, faced the wall, and with a seeming eternity of pent up frustration, slammed the halisen into the support post of the door.

"AAAAAAAH!" and she proceeded to give the post the beating of its life, yelling and hitting and cursing unintelligibly until at long last the river of anger and stress drained to a trickle and she was left sitting on the floor, leaning against the post, facing the wall. Her breath came in the curious hiccups of one somewhere between sobs and exhaustion. The halisen lay on the ground beside her hand, where she'd dropped it.

Sousuke didn't say a word, but stood before her, holding out her teacup. When she accepted it, he cautiously picked up the halisen and replaced it in the corner.

"I'm sorry." Her voice was soft, but steady. She gazed into the teacup.

"Understood."

---

"Sergeant Lewis reporting from the galley: area clear. We've found no transmitters, active or passive, and are now in the process of reassembling our ovens," there was a pause on the line, "lunch for B shift might be a little late, though..."

Tessa shifted uncomfortably in her captain's chair. "Thank you, Mr. Lewis. Please make an announcement about lunch for the shift, and resume your regular duties." _Dammit._ Then again, it seemed unlikely the galley would be chosen to hide a transmitter. Still, Kaname had spent a lot of time there during her visit, and it was such an easy place to search. Oh well.

Scanning the rest of the ship was already under way. Engineering and the hangar would likely take at least another four hours, and the crew was grumbling about the quarters' search, which would likely increase the amount of time to complete that assignment as well. The search of the ship had begun the moment Tessa had returned aboard with Kurz and Melissa. The common opinion was that it was some sort of drill, but while there was some grousing about the inconvenience, the invasion of privacy, and the apparent futility, no one was about to gainsay the Captain to her face.

Commander Mardukas and Lt. Commander Kalinin had both agreed that there had to be a transmitter somewhere aboard, after seeing the chart. While neither could think of a way that Kaname or anyone else could have planted one in the time frame indicated by the locations, both were certain it was the only reasonable explanation. A submarine's concealment was its greatest advantage, and if that had been compromised, the de Danaan was in serious jeopardy.

What kind of transmitter would Kaname have used? Tessa found her mind unconsciously reaching out toward the girl's as the hours stretched on with no success and her worry mounted. She stopped before contact was made. After all, that part of Kaname's brain was pretty much out of commission until the drugs wore off, and it wouldn't do to risk immersion. She hoped the lack of REM sleep and other side-effects of the drugs didn't do too much harm. Still, she almost wished that resonance were an option. She had to know how Kaname had been tracking them, and more importantly, whether others could do the same.

It was twenty minutes into her nineteenth consecutive hour at the conn when Tessa felt a tap on her shoulder. Commander Mardukas was standing behind her and slightly to the right, with an expectant look on his face. Had he said something?

"Commander?" She truly hoped he hadn't said anything yet. It was difficult maintaining a proper aura of command when one was the youngest person aboard, especially if one lost one's concentration and started missing reports.

"If I may make a recommendation?" She nodded her permission, and he continued. "Given the likelihood of enemy engagements in the near future, it might be best for you to rest now."

Tessa smiled; an overly cheerful turn of the lips and eyes to hide the embarrassment at having to have such an obvious thing pointed out to her. "You're right, Commander, I probably should get some sle--" The crackle of the intercom interrupted her.

"Conn: Sonar. New contact bearing one-eight-five. Range, 150 meters and closing fast. It sounds like a torpedo."

Tessa and Mardukas exchanged a look. So much for sleep. "Firing control, ready countermeasures. All hands to battle stations. Helm, increase to twenty-six naughts, maintain current heading." Mardukas was already pulling up the displays of the ocean in the immediate vicinity and Tessa moved to join him in determining the best place for a dogfight. "Sonar, any additional contacts?"

"Negative; no subs or ships – it could have been a flyover, but we're not detecting any carriers in the area." _Fantastic_. "Target is at 85 meters and still closing."

"Mardukas, have the torpedo room flood the number four tube and see if they can knock the target out of the water, countermeasures to be deployed the moment it misses."

"Aye, Ma'am." He relayed the orders.

Tessa felt the slightest shudder through the deck plating as their torpedo fired. Ten seconds later, a similar ripple warned her that countermeasures had been fired. The bridge crew waited in tense silence, and then Sonar was calling again: enemy torpedo's course had been effected, but was still active.

"Ten meters and closing."

"Crew brace for impact!"


	8. Chapter 8

a/n. Well, seeing as how I've been threatened with Supertroopers and flogging, and because my beta assures me that this is not too sappy to post, I decided not to go another ten days without updating. I'm glad you're enjoying this, so please don't hurt me if I happen to be a bit slow. Oh, and special thanks to RangerH and cultnirvana – you guys really motivate me.

Chapter 8.

"_Hushabye, don't you cry..."_

_---_

Thank God for debris. The current theory was that the torpedo had hit a bit of floating debris from either one of the countermeasures or the response torpedo. In either case, detonation had occurred at least three meters from the hull, rather than actually inside the sub. Not that it really made that much of a difference.

The concussion wave from the explosion had slammed into the ship, compressing the outer hull and crumpling the plating surrounding the port-side propulsion assembly. Leaks in the port-side engineering area had flooded three compartments before containment bulkheads could be secured, and the degree of damage made bailing and patching the effected sections extremely difficult. Engineering estimates indicated the job would take at least seven hours if they could dry-dock, and underwater, that figure would increase twofold.

Sonar had frantically searched the waters for the source of the torpedo, in addition to re-checking MITHRIL satellite data for signs of an aircraft or some other delivery method. No enemy subs or ships seemed to be anywhere in the area. Uneasy rumors that someone may have delivered the torpedo via long-range missile were beginning to circulate. The idea that there was a transmitter somewhere aboard was no longer treated with disbelief; finding it had become the number-one priority for anyone not directly involved in battle or repair operations.

Tessa sat in her chair on the bridge going over the attack again in her mind. It didn't really make much sense to send just one torpedo. Unless the weapon scored a direct hit on something vital, the likelihood of its sinking the ship was relatively small. So was this a test? Just something to ascertain whether they were actually there? If that were the case, why a torpedo? There were plenty of other things one could drop in the water to determine if something was there. Even so, the torpedo had done its work. As soon as the absence of additional sonar contacts had been established, they'd had to surface to minimize the pressure on the rest of the hull while damage was assessed and make-shift repairs were performed. Anyone who knew where to watch with a well-placed satellite would have seen them.

Her fingers pulled nervously at her braid. There had been no deaths in the last attack, but that hardly meant they'd continue to be so lucky. That everyone had managed to evacuate engineering with only one crewman critically injured was a testament to the thoroughness of the crew's training. Response times had been excellent. Duties had been handled with the cool professionalism one would expect of seasoned MITHRIL sailors. _And they only sent one torpedo..._

Four whole days, she'd agreed to give Kaname. Four days (well, a little under three now)of no pressure, no interrogation, no outside interference in the mental war she knew the girl was waging with herself. Had she made the right decision? Was an old friend's life really worth the horrible risk she'd placed upon her crew? Looking over at Commander Mardukas as he discussed the new course with the helm, she could not help but feel his silent accusations. Kaname may have placed the transmitter, but Tessa's own weakness was what allowed it to stay aboard long enough for this to happen.

As if sensing her thoughts, the commander finished his conversation with the helm and returned to her side. "They're making the adjustments to the steering to compensate for lack of port-side thrust. We'll be limping, but we should make it in about four hours." His eyes were hard, but he sounded merely tired.

"Thank you, Commander."

"It's a good plan, sticking to the trenches. We'll have a much better chance of evading torpedoes and confusing enemy sonar. But our maneuverability isn't nearly what it was." He sighed. "Crush depth is going to be considerably shallower, too, considering." _Considering our port-side has all sorts of dents and cracks in it. Considering we were practically inches from being blasted to kingdom come. Considering your mis-allocated loyalty just about cost you your crew and still might. _ Tessa's mind was quick to supply a maelstrom of guilt. "Take a break. It's going to get worse before it gets better." He was staring at her closely, and she decided not to argue.

"Very well, Commander. I will be in my quarters. If anything happens--"

"I'll call."

She left the bridge, and headed for her quarters. She felt as though she'd only just closed her eyes when the whistle on her comm unit sounded. _Not again._ She took a deep breath to steady herself; it would not do for the Captain to be heard whining like a child over lack of sleep or the unfairness of battle.

"Bridge to the Captain."

"Captain speaking."

"New sub contact. You're needed on the bridge."

---

"Ahh. A picture is worth a thousand words."

"I thought you'd like that. The buyers were likewise impressed."

"Excellent. And our price?"

"Has been met by several of them. I informed them of the lack of exclusivity for each attempt."

"Very polite of you, but keep in mind that if this stirs up a rivalry or two, our business can only benefit."

"I'm sorry. I had not considered that."

"Not to worry. You're young, after all." A pause. "Anything new from our guest?"

"Oh, yes. Mr. Leuyenduyck regrets to report that he has had to call a hiatus in the proceedings. It seems our guest's liver began to hemorrhage and some emergency surgery became necessary. Mr. Vermeer has yet to regain consciousness."

"Hmm. Not that I would ever think of offering advice to one of Mr. Leuyenduyck's proficiency, however do let him know that Agent Maerek is at his disposal. He'll know what I mean."

"Of course. You know, you have something of a cruel streak."

"Don't we all?"

---

"Joel? Hey, Joel. Wake up." This was a familiar voice. A friend's voice. What on earth was a friend's voice doing here? "Come on, Joel. Quit faking. Are you gonna live or what?"

He groaned. That was about all he could manage. He couldn't move his head. He couldn't feel his hands. The back of his throat was dry and raw with screaming. His stomach felt as though it had exploded and his feet—_a pair of shears: snip, snip, a toe held before his eyes and the blood_—his feet hurt a lot.

"Damn, you're in rough shape. Come on. Wake up for me, please?"

"Jan?" He'd finally placed it, but it made no sense at all. What on earth was his roommate doing here in hell? Unless. "Oh God, Jan, did they get you too?" His words were barely a whisper. A tear leaked down his cheek. With an effort, he forced his eyes open. Leaning over the bed, his roommate's face peered down at him. Dark, symmetrical bruises marred both cheeks and his neck was encircled by a brace. The skin of his forehead and nose appeared badly sunburned, but his eyes were marvelously unharmed. So familiar. So concerned.

"You could say that. Jeez, Joel. You look like my face feels. What the hell happened in the lab this time?" _In the lab... huh? _ He stared at his roommate and confusion began to cloud his mind. Had he been having some sort of nightmare? Nightmares never hurt this much when you woke up, but then again, he also remembered being shot in the lab that night. The idea that he'd simply been shot made a hell of a lot more sense than the thought that he'd been captured and tortured. Part of his mind wanted nothing more than to believe it—anything to avoid thinking about that horribly reasonable voice, and its carefully calculated agonies.

"Where are we?"

"In a hospital, you dork. Where else would we be? We found you in that lab under a bunch of concrete when you didn't come home last night." He took a deep breath and coughed a bit before continuing. "That crazy robot of yours was in the way of getting you out and they asked me to move it, since I kinda remembered how you did it that last time."

"You piloted Saya?" Joel knew there was a reason that this shouldn't be possible, but for the life of him, he couldn't think of it. And besides, any situation in which he could believe himself safely in a hospital, rather than in the hands of the enemy, was preferable to a more logical, horrible truth.

"Tried to. The damn thing nearly killed me." One of Jan's bandaged hands touched his blistered face gingerly. His expression took on a seriousness that Joel had seldom seen on his happy-go-lucky roommate. "One minute I was... in the lab. The next I was somewhere else, and you know it was the strangest thing, but part of me honestly believed I was turning into the new place," he half-smirked, his burns obviously bringing the gesture up short.

"Psi field. Don't mess with it, Jan." Somehow it seemed terribly important to impress this point upon him. "You screw up with that, and you'll go nuts," _like Kaname,_ "or die," _was that what happened to Yoshi?_ "or become way too interesting to some very mean people." _Very_ mean. _No. It wasn't a dream. It happened. That slight nausea; that's the drugs. And my feet; I'm only imagining them. I'm being brainwashed._ The realization struck him as oddly amusing, and he laughed weakly, feeling the ache of his diaphragm bouncing against internal injuries. "You're not really here, are you Jan?"

His roommate frowned, "What are you talking about?"

"You're just another one of their tricks. Jan doesn't know anything. There's no reason for the real Jan to be here." He redirected his stare to the ceiling. "IT'S NOT GOING TO WORK, YOU BASTARDS! I'M NOT TELLING YOU SHIT!" It was pure bravado. He knew that one more day of this – one more hour – and he would tell them everything, anything, to make them stop the games and the pain. But maybe an hour would be enough. Maybe the real Jan would talk to the cops. Maybe those MITHRIL people would declare war on these bastards. Maybe somehow, someone would rescue him.

"You can't go on like this, buddy." It sounded so much like Jan. "You always were way too stubborn. But for what it's worth, you were a good roommate," he seemed sincere, and yet sad. It took several moments for Joel to put it together. The way his previous roommate had left suddenly for a family matter. The way Jan had shown up and been so perfect. The fact that it had all happened three weeks after Chikitaka-san signed the contract with Vrees.

"Jan..." his heart sank with realization. "You found the satchel." The words hurt almost as much as the scissors.

Jan nodded. "I knew you wouldn't take it with you to the police station, and if our apartment wasn't a safe place, I knew you'd go straight to your hiding spot with it before you saw them."

"You stole Saya." Breathing was suddenly very difficult.

"And nearly died for it." He gave a bitter laugh. "They're going to make me pilot her again tomorrow, so if you're pissed at me now, at least you probably get to have the last laugh." He stared off into space for several moments as Joel panted around the lump in his throat. Finally, Jan leaned back over the bed, and in a near whisper, continued. "I'm going to give you a little advice." Joel closed his eyes tightly, just wishing Jan would leave. "I know you probably don't want to hear it, but you don't know these people like I do. Give them the cypher to the notes, Joel." Joel gave the slightest shake of his head, but Jan spoke without a pause. "They'll kill you if you don't. What's worse, they'll kill your aunt, your grandfather, those Japanese friends of yours; everyone you talked to on the off chance you told them something."

"That include you, you son of a bitch?"

"No. But they know where Chidori is, and you'd better believe she's at the top of the list to join you here." The words sounded as true as gold and inevitable as taxes. "There's no way you're getting out of here alive – even I can't save you, and whether you believe me or not, I did try." Joel felt a hand grasp his wrist and he opened his eyes to stare his former roommate in the face as the man continued. "But you _can_ save Chidori. Give them the cypher and they don't need her anymore." He stood, and moved beyond Joel's view. Joel heard a door open. Jan's voice pierced the room one final time. "It's what Chikitaka would have wanted." Joel heard the slight hiss and creak as the door closed, and he felt another presence had replaced Jan in the room.

"Ah, Mr. Vermeer," Words as smooth as glass, with edges just as sharp. "Glad to see you've decided to wake up. Shall we continue?"

_NOOOOOOO!_

---

"ooo!"

Sousuke was instantly awake, instinctively hiding that fact as his ears strained for any sound of an intruder. Hearing none, he sat up, removed his pistol from beneath the sleeping bag and inspected his surroundings. To his left, the wooden door remained closed and locked. Its support posts appeared un-tampered with, and the bamboo wall showed no signs of a breach. The pile of supplies behind him bore no evidence of having been moved, and the moonlight streaming through the solitary window in front of him, above the hut's sole counter, revealed no unusual shadows or movement. That left –

"yoshi...nooo" Kaname's voice was muffled more by sleep than by the canvas curtain he'd arranged between their sleeping bags. He slid it aside and crawled over next to her, taking in her disheveled hair, clenched fists and closed eyes at a glance. She was sleeping on top of the sleeping bag – the night had been rather warm – and her pajamas were twisted around her as though dragged through a singularly localized tornado. The collar had slid sideways and was now pulled taught against her throat and she seemed to be wrestling with it, for all that she was clearly far from waking. It would have been amusing, if not for the pained look on her face. He sighed.

"Kaname, wake up. You are having a nightmare." She seemed oblivious, and continued to struggle until finally he lifted her shoulder and tugged the collar free. She rolled toward him and he found his arm trapped under hers, held teddy-bear-like against her face and chest.

"don't die... this time..." she murmured to the captured limb. In the moonlight, he could see the streaks of tears on her cheek, and hesitated. It hurt to see her this way, for all that it was an improvement over the Whispered speech. He lay down beside her, conceding her the arm. Minutes ticked by, and the young woman slept peacefully. Sousuke finally decided she was over her dream and was about to extricate himself when her eyes opened. She stared at him and he returned her gaze, unsure of how to proceed. Then she squeezed his arm more tightly. Her eyes closed and tears silvered the feathery lashes against her cheeks.

"I couldn't hold him close enough. I killed him, Sousuke."

"I'm sorry." He cursed his inability to formulate a more appropriate response, but his own past experiences told him that there was seldom a "right" thing to say to a grieving person. He thought about trying to reassure her that it wasn't her fault. Kurz had a tendency to be the first to inform him when _he_ was taking on more responsibility than he honestly deserved in the death of a comrade, or even an enemy. The disturbing truth, however, was that he didn't know what had happened that night. While he didn't believe Kaname could ever have killed someone in cold blood, he also could not forget the blankness in her eyes as she leveled the gun at him that night. "When you were in high school, you generally responded to emotional situations by discussing them with your friends. If this preference has not changed, and you would like to talk now, I would be honored to listen."

She sniffed and her lips curled into a small, sad smile. Then she sniffed again, and wiped her eyes with her free hand. In the moment that her hand was occupied, he freed his arm and crawled back to his side of the curtain, but returned almost immediately, bearing a package of tissues. He noted her relief at his reappearance.

"You want me to tell you about Yoshi?" She sat up and wiped her nose, then crumpled the tissue and looked around for the wastebasket. Sousuke interrupted her search, taking the tissue and setting it aside before taking a second one to gently wipe old tears from her cheeks.

"I want you to tell me whatever you need to say to help yourself deal with this situation." He set the second tissue with the first, then settled himself more comfortably on the unoccupied edge of her sleeping bag. "In MITHRIL, we are debriefed at the conclusion of every mission, incident, and assignment." Kaname helped herself to a third tissue and blew her nose again. Sousuke continued, "This provides our commanders with the fullest situational data, however it also allows us a chance to review the situation, assess its positive and negative aspects and determine future courses of action."

"You want me to give you a _situational report_ for that night," her voice held a trace of its characteristic spirit, but then she sighed. "The data collection continues. Would you believe I actually got pretty good at giving reports?"

"I am certain such a skill would have been as valuable in a scientific context as in a military one."

"Hmm." She punched her pillow into a more convenient shape before lying back down, her face to the ceiling. "Sometimes I think you two might have gotten along pretty well," she said, twisting her neck slightly, seemingly unable to find the right alignment with the small, grey cushion. She sat up abruptly. "We're not being recorded in here, are we?"

"No."

"There aren't any cameras or tape recorders? Kurz isn't stashed away in the cupboard with a notepad?"

"We are alone, and to the best of my knowledge, free of surveillance."

In a swift movement, Kaname grabbed the wrist of the arm upon whose elbow Sousuke had been reclining and pulled it out from under his chin. He found himself flat on his back, as the young woman settled her neck on his shoulder and once again stared at the ceiling. "Are you comfortable?"

He had a distinct impression that his arm would be falling asleep in a matter of minutes, but he nodded anyway.

"I needed a better pillow for this story," she explained, and taking a deep breath, spoke for the first time about Yoshi and Kaname, and the last night of their life.

---

"K-chan, are you alright?" The voice in her helmet was loud and slightly panicked. "K-chan! Answer me! Your integrity dropped to 90. Are You Okay?"

"I co-located with a semi-truck. I've felt better. molecularintegrityat96.3percentandclimbing...hydrocarbonandsteelcontaminationatnominallevels..." she murmured, feeling her conscious mind lapsing away beneath the comfortable logic of the Whispers.

"K-chan, snap out of it." Her sensors registered Yoshi's logon on the remote, and Saya chimed in with a warning of system ingress.

"terminusdensityexceededadviseablelevels--"

"I know that, Kaname. I saw the thing on the damn recorder. Crazy L.A. drivers." Yoshi's eyes were hidden behind the headset, but his mouth frowned, and he hit a switch on one of the lab walls.

/External power connection fluctuating./

"I need you to eject from Saya, Kaname. Now." She saw him approach the back of the A-S before flinching back. "And drop the Lambda shield before I hurt myself."

The idea of Yoshi hurting himself pierced the shimmering calculations of her Whispered self, and she managed to break free. "Saya, disengage lambda driver."

/Lambda driver off line. External power disengaged. Time to shut-down, five minutes./

"Are you back?" Yoshi's voice sounded a little calmer. "It looks like your integrity is topping out at about 97."

"Umm, yeah. I think so. I'm not sure whether to worry about my legs or my axles at the moment." In the viewer, she saw Yoshi step up behind the A-S and grin into the dorsal camera. She keyed the eject sequence, and felt the familiar drop in pressure as the access panel opened. Then arms were wrapped around her waist, pulling her backwards into the lab.

"Legs, K-chan. Definitely legs." He hugged her for a moment, before letting her sit on the floor to get her bearings. "Well, at least we know it works. Co-location worked like a charm." He smiled, and she rolled her eyes. "Well, you're not dead, and somewhere in L.A. there's a truck-driver thinking he had the worst dream in the universe. Not to mention the footage you got..." he smiled excitedly before removing the headset and catching her stare. "You think Hollywood or Hong Kong might be interested in this thing?" She laughed. She couldn't help it.

"So we're done." They shared a look full of triumph and exhaustion.

"We're done," he sat on the floor in front of her, cross-legged, their knees touching. "I can never thank you enough. Whatever happens."

She looked away, unable to match the seriousness of his implication. "I'm the one who should be grateful. You're the one who made this work." She dropped a confident mask over her confused heart, and smiled at him. "So can we go home now?"

"Do you think you'd be up for running her through one last power-up cycle? I want to make sure that pilot-system separation is complete and that circuit integrity was maintained." He was being his usual, overly-cautious self, but she couldn't really blame him.

"Okay, but only if you're buying the drinks tomorrow night."

"Deal."

She climbed back into the A-S, and instructed Saya to power up. She saw Yoshi stand and set the headset on one of the work benches as the reboot froze her limbs immobile. She watched him cross the lab to stand in front of Saya. Then she watched the man in the business suit enter the lab, H&K pointed straight at Yoshi.

"Your time's up, Mr. Chikitaka. I don't see any notes." The man's voice was cold, reptilian. Yoshi whirled to face him. Two minutes, thirty-nine seconds.

"There aren't any. I've decided not to give this discovery to Vrees. Or should I say, I've decided I'd rather not involve myself with arms dealers." The first shot hit Yoshi squarely in the foot, and he screamed. One minute, fifty-seven seconds.

"I really wish you'd reconsider." The man made a show of aiming again. Yoshi, on the ground reaching for his injured foot, raised his stunned face to the intruder.

"You'll never find them. I cannot allow the things Venserre would do with this technology." This time, the shot caught him in the ankle and his scream was louder than before. For a moment, he turned reflexively to look at Kaname, hidden as she was in the seemingly lifeless A-S. She saw the suffering on his face, as well as his determination to protect her. Thirty-two seconds.

"Ah. So there are notes. Care to tell me where they are? If not, I'd be happy to ask your lab assistant. Or perhaps that lovely girl I've seen hanging around?"

Time. "Saya, disable exterior lights. Activate Lambda driver. Initialize psi field." She kept her voice low, despite the fact that the helmet was sound-proofed.

/Lambda driver active. 94 efficiency. Psi field is ready for deployment. Estimated field radius at 49.6 centimeters./

"They know nothing about this. Give up." The pain in Yoshi's voice stirred a deep anger in Kaname, and she watched with impatient anguish as he dragged himself up from the floor to stand in front of Saya.

"You don't really think that's an option, do you?" The man raised the gun a third time. "Then again, if you're not going to tell me anything, your usefulness is at an end." He smiled. "After all, we have the prototype."

/Initialization complete./

"Yoshi!" Kaname acted with almost no conscious thought. Armor-clad arms wrapped themselves around her partner, turning him towards her and drawing him into a crushing embrace even as the psi field established itself. She felt the co-located echo of the shot, saw tears on Yoshi's face, and heard the Whispers present her emotions with a terrifying possibility. Anger flared and the lab exploded in a conflagration of rage and lambda energy.

---

"I couldn't hold him close enough," her voice shook and she knew the tears were flowing freely now. "49.6 centimeters. If I could just have brought him two or three centimeters closer the field might have saved him," she sobbed, turning away to curl into a fetal ball, her cheek still pressed to his upper arm. "I knew what that lambda driver could do. I knew exactly what would happen to the lab, and the people in it, but I just didn't care." She cried harder, choking on her words. "I watched that man's face burn to ash. He looked so surprised. I watched Yoshi's eyes go blank." Her shoulders hunched as she pulled herself in more tightly. "He was smiling at me." Guilt and grief overwhelmed her, supplanting her voice and filling her throat.

In her mind, the scenes that had been lurking beneath the Whispers, behind the protective barriers, suddenly shone through with perfect clarity: Saya's voice relaying the target termination information; Yoshi's blank, smiling eyes; the blood that flowed from him when the field dropped; the horrible stillness of his chest when she finally extricated herself from the A-S and fell sobbing on his bosom. She remembered the ozone smell of the lab, and the faint scent of rose petals from the bouquet he'd hidden in the control room. She remembered the terrible realization of what she'd done, and her despairing surrender to the Whispers – how they'd analyzed the scenario, and triumphantly reiterated the offensive potential of the new weapon. Then she remembered where she was.

_Oh god._ She'd told someone. She'd told Sousuke. She'd confessed murder, and somehow that made everything that much more real: that much more inescapable. And now she was sobbing like a baby, inches from the last person on earth she'd want to see her weakness. She brought her fist to her mouth in a futile attempt to smother her crying.

"Don't." A strong but gentle hand pulled her fist down, away from her face. Then it dropped to her lower shoulder, and she felt herself cocooned in an unyielding, yet strangely comforting embrace. "You may cry for as long as you can, but you must deal with this." She tried half-heartedly to pull away, but Sousuke only held her tighter. So she bawled. She sobbed until her stomach was sore with it and her throat ached with it and Sousuke's arm was drenched in tears. She cried until dawn greyed the windows and her entire body felt weighted down with exhaustion. The whole time, Sousuke did not let go.

Finally, it was over. The grief remained, but she felt strangely hollow, as though her last sob had been drained from her with no emotion left in its place. Reluctantly, she turned to face her old friend.

"I'm a killer."

"Yes." His voice was quiet, acknowledging truth, but without any further admonishment. "To everything, there is a season." There was acceptance in the words, understanding woven in a whisper. Some part of his soul touched hers as never before, and for a moment, it was almost like resonance. "Please sleep now. We will finish your report in the morning."

"You'll stay with me?" She didn't really have to ask, but she deeply needed to hear it.

"Affirmative."


	9. Chapter 9

a/n My deepest apologies for the appallingly long time for this update. I had the most dreadful case of writer's block, then my email didn't work, and finally my computer and ffnet apparently conspired to refuse to let me upload anything. sighs That aside, I wanted to thank everyone for reviewing, and my beta for finally getting back to me (and taking the time in the first place). I hope that you'll enjoy this installment.

Chapter 9.

_A journey of a thousand miles begins with a well-placed kick in the ass._

---

The water always looked black. At this depth, there was no visible difference between the obsidian bulk of the massifs and the inky darkness of the ocean itself. Even so, the slightest miscalculation in navigation would clear up any confusion in a heartbeat. These were dangerous waters to travel, and under ordinary circumstances, the de Danaan would be kept well clear of them. Sadly, circumstances were far from ordinary.

_I'm tired. _ She felt the icy ocean against her hull. She heard the distant pinging of sonar, even as she dove to hide beneath an outcropping. She trembled at the rippling compressions which signaled the end of her solitude in this canyon. But over and around it all was the aching weariness of a shift gone on far too long.

She had originally removed herself to the Lady Chapel as they entered the canyons to better control their navigation of the treacherous topography. Sub-surface cliffs and trenches provided numerous ways to confuse enemy sonar and evade torpedoes, but with the damage to port-side propulsion the increased responsiveness provided by the Chapel's interface became a critical advantage. Tessa had been linked to the ship for the past eight hours, guiding Dana away from the Chinese submarine 'People's Hidden Strength,' and had finally succeeded in losing them among the formations. The de Danaan's "sensations," however, were beginning to feel indistinguishable from her own senses, and Tessa knew she'd had enough. A burst of effort flitted a message to the bridge. The commander would send someone down to pull her out of the Chapel soon. She would have to trust her crew and her subordinates for an hour or two in this vicious game of hide-and-seek.

A rumbling noise echoed above her, and she felt the canyon wall begin to crumble. Like the strange bastard offspring of a manta and a shark, she glided sideways and down, away from the tumbling rock and further into the darkness.

"Bridge to the Captain: helm controls remain locked. Is it still your intention to relinquish them?"

She ignored the strong temptation to make her way to the bottom to take a nap, and carefully disengaged her mind from the ship's control systems.

"You have the helm, Commander. Please see that I'm taken to my quarters." And she lay back in the chair, her eyes closed and her mind finally surrendering to sleep.

---

"How do you feel?" The alarm clock resting on the floor beside her read 12:04, and Sousuke was leaning over her. The sergeant was already dressed, his hair damp from a shower or a swim. It figured that he'd gotten up before she, but she didn't mind. His tone was familiarly neutral, but the tiniest hint of concern lurked in his eyes. "Do you require analgesics for your head?"

Kaname did have a headache this morning. The stitches itched, and that temple throbbed dully. Further, her eyelids felt stiff and encrusted with dried tears. _I must look awful._

"Aspirin would be good." She watched as he retrieved a pair of tablets from one of their many assorted packs. He filled a cup with water and brought all three items to her. She accepted them and downed the pills, grimacing at the lukewarm, slightly off flavor of the sterilized water.

"The lacerations appear to be healing well," Sousuke observed. "I took the liberty of checking your resting pulse and respiration rates before waking you. You'll be happy to know that both are normal." She stared at him, not at all certain why this fact should make her happy, but willing to go along with it. At least he wasn't condemning her or bringing up her confessions of the night before. "Are you at all dizzy?"

"Why would I be dizzy?" She got to her knees to roll up her sleeping bag, only to discover that she did feel a bit dizzy, not to mention nauseous and grimy. "Uhng," she groaned eloquently.

"It is a common side-effect of the drugs you were given. Exertion will raise your endorphin levels and reduce the strength of this symptom. I've arranged to begin today with swimming." His tone was light, matter-of-fact. She almost wondered whether the night before had even happened. Then she noted the somewhat more serious cast to her companion's eyes. He was concerned about more than her health, but in typical Sousuke fashion, didn't seem to know what else to say. Then again, she didn't really know either.

She moved over to the sink to brush her teeth, and was surprised to feel a slight tug on her hair. Sousuke had picked up her comb from the little toiletries case Kyoko had packed and was beginning to brush her hair. Seeing the question in her eyes and the toothbrush in her mouth, he paused. "If I may?" She nodded, bemused, and continued her toothbrushing as Sousuke first combed then re-braided her long hair into a neat queue.

"Where'd you learn how to braid?"

"It is a useful skill when fashioning rope from materials at hand." He was blushing, but she decided not to comment on it, smiling inwardly. For all the chaos in her life, at least Sousuke had not changed much.

"Speaking of useful skills, do you think we could go fishing this afternoon? I'd rather not eat MRE's two nights in a row."

"That would be enjoyable. I will attempt to allot time for it." He looked at his watch. "I will meet you on the beach. Please do not forget to apply sunscreen," and he opened the door, preparing to leave her in privacy.

"Sousuke?" At the sound of his name, he paused, turning back to look at her.

"Kaname?"

"About last night... Do you think less of me?" _What a very odd way to put it._ Then again, she couldn't really find words for the uneasiness rippling in the back of her head.

"Negative. Your behavior was understandable. For now, however, you are overdue for exercise." He waited for her nod of acceptance before exiting the room.

---

"Our Chinese friends have expressed displeasure at the reluctance of the target to be caught. It seems de Danaan is leading them a merry chase around the Ring of Fire."

"The terms of the agreement said nothing about ease of capture. With the coordinates they're being given, the bulk of the difficulty has been removed." A low chuckle. "Were they expecting gift wrap?"

"De Danaan's speed and maneuverability do make her a challenging prize, even with coordinates every six hours."

"You're suggesting the piccadores should season the bull before any further ventures on the part of our matador friends?"

"Sabotage should be a relatively simple matter, albeit somewhat risky to our pilot."

"How is Agent Maerek?"

"Stable. Saya reported something about pilot integrity dropping below acceptable levels, however I am not certain how to avoid this. In the mean time, Mr. Maerek is interacting with her primarily via the external computer link we established."

"You did thank Mr. Leuenduyck for obtaining that set of plans, correct?"

"Of course. He believes the rest of the cypher is only a session or two away."

"Hmm. Very well. Please inform Agent Maerek that his services will be required tonight. The integrity problem should be dealt with before then if at all possible. He shall place a barb or two to slow down our quarry, and return to us as he can." A pause. "By the by, have we located the girlfriend yet? A spare pilot would come in useful, should ours expire."

"No. But we're still looking."

---

When the contrails signaled that their isolation was at an end at three o'clock that afternoon, Sousuke and Kaname were jogging through the forest. They were carrying backpacks (in case of mishaps on the trail, according to Sousuke), and following what appeared to be an old sentry trail. Their path had led them into a small clearing when Sousuke noticed the white streaks in the sky.

"Kaname, you need to hide here, and wait for my signal." He grabbed her arm and pushed her, face-down into a thick copse of bushes. She glared up at him, a small fire sparking briefly in her eyes before being extinguished by memory and sadness. He relented a little, clarifying, "We have company. I will determine the nature of the newcomers and radio you if it is safe. If it is not safe, I will--"

"If it's not safe, I'm screwed anyway, Sousuke," she interrupted in a resigned whisper. "We're on an island."

Her uncharacteristic pessimism bothered him, but he had no time to banter with her. Suppressing his irritation and worry, he simply nodded and waited a moment while she hid herself more carefully. Then, marking the spot, he headed in the direction indicated by the contrails to get a better look.

Company was not entirely unexpected. The captain had warned him that Mao and Weber would be joining them on the fourth day of Kaname's respite. This, however, was only the afternoon of the third. Furthermore, there were six distinct trails, rather than the two he'd been expecting. Various possibilities sifted through his mind as he ran, but years of experience kept him from deciding on one; it was better to wait for concrete facts.

The trails were generated by long range missiles of the type occasionally used by the de Danaan for transporting arm slaves. When they were almost directly above the island's main artillery range, they began to burst open, disgorging giant robots equipped with trios of parachutes. Sousuke reached the presumed touchdown location well before the first one landed and pulled a pair of binoculars from his pack. MITHRIL equipment was seldom marked as such, but the M-9's were all of the appropriate colors and configurations. The first two that landed appeared to be unmanned, coming to a halt as they did and failing to exhibit any further signs of motion. The third immediately moved to check on the first two, and Sousuke noted it, keeping a closer watch from his hidden vantage. The fourth seemed to be another unmanned M-9, but the fifth made fairly typical scouting motions the moment it landed and the sixth... _They sent the Arbalest?_

Seeing the familiar yellow-and-black markings of the unique A-S, Sousuke was tempted to immediately get on the radio and hail the visitors, but he restrained himself until such time as the fourth M-9 had come to a halt roughly thirty feet from him and his radio squawked.

"Urzu-7, this is Urzu-6. Hey Sousuke, that's all of us. You can come out now!" The voice was unmistakably Weber's.

"Copy that, Urzu-6. The location is secure. Feel free to eject." He strode into the clearing, and watched as the third A-S's hatch opened. Weber's M-9 went over to it and offered a palm to the occupant, helping Mao down to the ground before ejecting himself. Approaching her, Sousuke noted that the Sergeant Major was clearly not fully recovered from her injuries, but just as clearly would not take kindly to his making any mention of this fact. That she had accepted Weber's help was confirmation enough of her condition. "You're early."

She nodded. "Yeah, but we've just been stuck in those tubes for the past three hours, so explanations are going to have to wait." She gave him a pointed look, and he directed them back to the station. It was a very short walk, but Mao was still breathing a little hard when they reached it. She excused herself. Sousuke retrieved three bottles of water from the storage cupboard. He offered one to Weber, and they sat on the station's porch.

"So where's the lovely lady?" Weber's leer was not quite up to his usual standard, but given the fact that he was exhausted, Sousuke refrained from commenting.

"Hiding. I left her at a concealed point in the jungle." He quickly retrieved his radio, adjusted the frequency, and called the woman in question. "It's safe. Please return to the station."

There was a mumbled "okay, see you in a few" and the line closed.

"How's she doing?" Kurz asked, taking a long pull on the water bottle.

"She is experiencing some minor side-effects from the drugs, however her overall physical condition is good. Her head injury is healing as expected," he stared out at the ocean. "I am not qualified to assess her mental state."

"How are you doing?" For someone as frequently dense as Kurz was, he could be uncannily perceptive at precisely the wrong moments.

"Acceptably." Kurz snorted at that.

"Sure you are. Oh well. I guess you should wait to report until Melissa gets out here."

"Is the Sergeant Major truly fit for duty?" Sousuke asked.

"Damn straight!" The sergeant major in question moved from the doorway to join them on the porch, and gave Weber a say-anything-otherwise-and-you're-dead glare. "Anyway, Tessa ordered us here, so we're here. Sorry we had to move things up a bit, but it's getting pretty hairy out there." She sat down beside them carefully, leaning her back against the station wall and stretching her legs out in front of her. "The Captain's playing 'Hunt for Red October' all over the Pacific with the rest of the world's navies. As of about ten hours ago, she had to re-establish contact with MITHRIL and when they learned of the situation, they ordered her to offload all non-essential equipment." She paused to help herself to the remaining water bottle, grimacing as the taste of a liquid which was not beer made its way to her palate. "I guess they figure if she goes down, there'll be less to salvage that way. Pretty damn pessimistic if you ask me, but whatever Kaname did to target de Danaan, it looks like the bad guys can do it too." She looked around. "Where is she anyway? I didn't think you'd be letting her out of your sight."

Sousuke repeated his explanation and Mao nodded. "Paranoid as always. Probably for the best, though. Do you think she's up to answering questions yet?" Seeing uncertainty waver on Sousuke's features, she decided to clarify. "I know Tessa said to give her 'til tomorrow, but they're getting pounded. So far the de Danaan hasn't taken any direct hits, but the damage from the indirect ones is pretty bad." She sipped more water. "Tessa and Madukas are geniuses at sea combat, but the odds aren't good for a sub that can't hide." She outlined the situation for him, detailing the four attacks they'd survived so far and making note of the crew's attempts at finding the transmitter. "So you see, we really don't have a choice. If they don't find a way to stop this thing soon, they're going to die out there."

"Wherever she hid that thing, she did a damn good job of it," Kurz agreed. "SRT personnel mostly got assigned to searching, since we're not good for much else in underwater engagements. I looked everywhere she ever went on de Danaan that time she visited. Zip."

"I'm not certain that she herself will know, until the medication wears off. It seems to effect her technical memories somewhat." Sousuke went on to report on his observations of Kaname, her performance in exercises, her occasional mental lapses and the frustration which accompanied them. With regards to her confessions of the previous night, he found himself uncertain of how much to say. Mao seemed to sense it, and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

"You don't have to tell us everything. Did she tell you anything about the accident that would help us re-capture this thing? Or at least know what we're up against?"

"I believe her A-S is capable of some form of ultra-fast, long distance movement. It is also able to somehow withstand large amounts of damage, and--"

"It's called co-location," Kaname interrupted emerging from around the jungle-facing side of the station. Seeing Kurz and Melissa, she smiled brightly, before frowning and appearing to become suddenly shy. "Hi guys."

"Hi, Kaname!" Kurz flashed her his best lady-killer smile, and Melissa elbowed him in the ribs.

"Down boy," she murmured out of the side of her mouth. Refocusing on the beautiful, and curiously subdued young woman standing before her, she smiled. "Long time, no see."

Noting the way Kaname's eyes strayed to Melissa's bandages, and the guilt that was rapidly resurfacing on her face, Sousuke leaned down to offer her a hand up to the porch. Pulling her up, he took the moment of incidental closeness to whisper to her. "They are glad to see you. The sergeant major's injuries are not your fault, so please do not concern yourself with them." He caught her gaze, and she nodded before moving to sit between himself and Melissa.

"So you're here to talk about Saya?" Her voice was light, but there was a brittle quality to it that the others couldn't help but hear.

"Actually, we're here because the Captain thought you needed a chaperone." Kurz saw Kaname's shoulders relax slightly, and took his joke a step further. "We couldn't leave you all alone on a desert island with Sousuke, now could we?" He noted the way his teammate's eyes darkened at this explanation, and he grinned.

"Oh, I wouldn't have taken advantage of him... much," Kaname replied, with perfectly played sincerity. Kurz nearly choked and Melissa smirked while Sousuke's eyebrows disappeared beneath his bangs. Kaname laughed at their reactions, finally relaxing the rest of the way. "So how is Tessa, anyway?" Kaname noted the expressions passed between the Urzu team members, and sighed. "It's bad, isn't it?"

---

"--dame Captain. Please wake up. You need to take this call." For a moment, Tessa was deeply disoriented, feeling parts of her brain calculating hull stress while other parts focused on new hydrodynamic propulsion systems and still others registered hands on her shoulders and Kalinin's concerned face roughly twenty-two centimeters from her own.

"Lt. Commander...?" She sat up in her bunk, and her subordinate handed her a comm unit and a cup of tea. She took a deep swallow of the latter.

"It's Kaname. The Urzu team has arrived at their assigned coordinates, and the Sergeant Major put her on the line for you." He motioned to the comm unit in her hand, and she nodded, flipping it on.

"Miss Chidori, this is the Captain. Can you please tell me where the transmitter is?" It seemed more than a little blunt as the first thing to say to someone with whom she'd not actually spoken in over three years, but military priorities were what they were.

"Are you okay??" The voice on the line was pure Kaname, and Tessa inwardly cursed herself for not managing to sound more energetic.

"I'm fine, just tired. I will be considerably happier once you tell me where the transmitter is, however, so that I can destroy it and just possibly get a full night's sleep before the next person decides to take a pot shot at us." There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Tessa nearly screamed in frustration. Now was not the time for emotional dilly-dallying. "Kaname?!"

"There is no transmitter."

"Can you repeat that?" Tessa was almost certain she'd heard correctly, but the tears of despair threatening the borders of her eyelids demanded one last hope that a different answer might be given.

"I am so sorry, Tessa, but there is no transmitter. You are being targeted by Saya via her destination library." Kaname's voice was agitated and laden with guilt. "There is a mylar sticker of a smiley face with the letters 'TDD' on it stuck to the maintenance clipboard of the Arbalest. That was her initial point of reference. She has since plotted twenty-six additional points, and as such, can trace you with or without the initial point." Another pause. "I'd explain it to you better, but I can't seem to remember exactly how it works."

_I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry._ "Is there any way to get rid of these reference points?" She had a sinking feeling that she knew the answer even before the comm crackled again.

"At least six of them are on pieces of equipment that you can't afford to deface enough to make a difference."

"The reactors."

"I'm so sorry. I never meant to make you a target. It wasn't supposed to happen like this." Tessa could hear Kaname's voice breaking under the weight of regret, and felt a moment's pity for her. Then the cold resignation of command took over.

"Whatever you meant by it, eighty-three lives are now at stake because of your actions." Her voice was hard and pitiless. It helped to hide the fear. "I need to know how to save my ship, Kaname. I can't defend her indefinitely under these conditions."

"You have to get Saya back. As long as they've got her, they can track you." The voice was quiet and Tessa refused to hear the anguish in it.

"Understood. Listen up, Kaname. I'm a little busy keeping de Danaan afloat at the moment, and MITHRIL has never had good luck tracking down the Venserre Consortium. You turned my ship into a target, therefore I'm giving you the responsibility of dealing with your invention." She heard a gasp on the other end. "Make sure Urzu-2 can hear me."

"I'm here, Captain."

"Roger that. Effective immediately, I am assigning Urzu-2, -6, and -7 to Miss Chidori to act in whatever capacity she requires. All A-S's, munitions, supplies and weapons at your current location are at her disposal for the purpose of finding and retrieving or destroying the A-S designated Saya." Kalinin's eyebrows were threatening to migrate to his crown, but Tessa ignored him. "Kaname, this is all the help I can give you. Is there anything else you'll need?"

"Tessa, I can't command--"

"AND I CAN'T BREATHE UNDER WATER!" She wasn't quite hysterical. Captains do not get hysterical. "If the only way to save my ship is to get rid of that A-S, then you must find some way to do it. If the traces I got from our resonance are even close to the truth, you are the only one who can. Unless you want to add another eighty-three to your death toll... SO IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU'LL NEED?" The other end of the line was absolutely silent, then Mao's voice came on.

"We'll call if she thinks of anything, and I'll report back with our progress every eight hours."

"Thank you, Sergeant Major. De Danaan out." Tessa closed the line and dropped the comm unit, then sat for a moment in her bunk and gulped the last of her tea. "Commander Kalinin?" she inquired, looking at his booted feet on the floor beside the bunk.

"Madame-Captain?"

"Why is my floor under water?"


	10. Chapter 10

a/n: Many thanks to my reviewers for your comments and encouragement and to skychan for subjecting himself to the rough draft of this. )

Chapter 10.

_Distances seem sharper when measured through your enemy's periscope._

---

Kaname stared at the comm unit in her hand. The weight of responsibility pressed the breath from her lungs and she was hard-put to continue breathing normally. Desperately, her mind fought for possibilities.

_I'll tear it apart. I'll start with the A.I. interface and the navigational assembly. I'll have to re-wire part of the lambda-driver and... and... nothing. I already have one psi generation control chip in my possession. I'll need to detach it from my cell phone without damaging the... the... _another blank space in her memory_. Two plus two is... _no idea_. WHAT THE HELL WAS TESSA THINKING!?!_

The three Urzu team members, sitting around the folding table, were only slightly less flabbergasted. Being reassigned to be used at the discretion of someone who had not been sane the last time their Captain had encountered her was not at all what they had anticipated. For a solid five minutes, no one spoke. Finally, Mao decided that as the ranking soldier in the room, she'd best say something.

"Well, it looks like we have our orders," she said, flashing Kaname what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "So, how do we go about finding your toy?"

"I don't know." Kaname's face went through several contortions of concentration. "Seriously. I should know, but I don't. My mind is blank. My memories aren't coming through for me. I don't know what she's counting on me to know. I can't dredge up the details. I just don't know!" She looked up at the Sergeant Major. "Or at least, I don't know enough to pull it off... Joel might."

Mao and Kurz exchanged a look, before Mao spoke up. "I'm afraid your friend Joel has been captured by the enemy."

Kaname stared at her for a long moment, her eyes showing disbelief followed by anguish and finally anger. "They have Joel?" Her voice was soft, dangerously soft if Sousuke remembered correctly. "Those murderers, those thieves who I wouldn't trust my psych notes with let alone this have the last person on earth who knows the kind of hell Yoshi and I have been going through for the past four months! They have the one man on the planet with the damn plans in his head?!?"

"I'm sorry. They took him when they got Saya." Mao shot a look to Sousuke, not sure of how stable Kaname was. The sergeant was having similar concerns.

"Of course they did. They took Joel. They stole Saya. They're trying to blow up the de Danaan, and turn me into an even bigger killer and now my own brain won't give me the information that I need and Tessa is going to blame me if any of her crew die..." her eyes were decidedly on the wild side. "They could destroy the earth with her if they figure it out. How many people would you say there are on the planet today? 6.2 billion? And if they surpass critical and x across all values shrinks to zero because I killed my lover and let our child be stolen by evil people while my own personal Mephistopheles ran rampant with my sanity..." she broke off in laughter. She looked at the three soldiers sitting around her, took in their baffled, concerned faces and laughed harder. "I'm having a nightmare, aren't I?"

"'Fraid not," said Kurz, reaching out to grab her shoulder comfortingly. "I can pinch you if you want proof." He grinned; cue Melissa.

"No pinching, Weber," but Mao could read the game from her space across the table, and refrained from her usual follow up punch. "Kaname, we don't really have time for nervous breakdowns. We're going to get your friend back, okay?" Kaname was still somewhere between laughing and crying, her head on the table, and her eyes obscured by her bangs. "Your memories will come back when those drugs wear off. How long does she have, Sousuke?"

"Approximately eleven hours, with some uncertainty based on metabolic rate and over-all hormonal levels," he said, checking his watch. "According to the Captain, your access to logic-based brain functions and technical memories should return at the same time." He wished he could somehow transfer serenity and comfort with his words, but that sort of communication had never been his forte. He settled for sounding competent and calm.

"So don't sweat that stuff just yet, okay?" Mao's voice was confident and brooked no opposition. Kaname nodded against the table. The Sergeant Major continued. "Let's start by listing assets. Currently, you have five M-9's, one ARX-7, three pilots, one carry compartment, one full set of A-S maintenance equipment--" she paused, and Weber picked up.

"Three monomolecular cutters, one 37mm sniper rifle, four Bofors guns, one flamethrower, and full ammunition/fuel for all of the above." He turned to Sousuke.

"The island is equiped with a generator as well as reserves of gasoline and propane. The hangar holds one fully fueled and flight-prepped Harrier jet." He went on to list a remarkable amount of military and computer equipment, finally producing a clipboard from among their packs, presumably to finish the recitation. "For personal equipment, we have five sets of scuba gear with two compressed air tanks apiece, food for roughly one month (assuming complete reliance on rations), 450 meters of rope in 150 meter lengths, one zodiac type inflatable boat with dual propellers, six personal flotation devices--"

"Not to mention knowing Sousuke, we've got enough sidearms, knives, grenades and explosives to take out the capital of Albania," chimed Kurz. At that, Kaname made the smallest of smiles, albeit a genuine one, and her companions relaxed slightly.

"Did you guys get anything from the lab or my apartment?" she asked.

"Aside from what Kyoko packed for you, I have only the mask which I retrieved from your hospital room." He fished it out of the lock box where he'd stowed it along with a number of semi-automatic pistols. Kaname took the odd contraption with an mixture of caution and relief. She pulled a small, plastic disc from one of the side panels, viewed the LED display beneath it and nodded.

"Well, things are looking up a bit," she said, replacing the disc with a bitter smile. "We have one K-2.0 remote access headset complete with twenty-seven hours remaining charge, one psi-generator simulation program, one soon-to-be-again expert in the field of co-location." She pulled her duffel bag to her, and spilled the contents on the table. Pushing the clothes aside, she hauled out the camera, cell-phone, and manila envelope. This last, she opened, reached inside and withdrew a sheet of assorted smiley-face stickers, closing the envelope and replacing it in the duffel before continuing. "More importantly, we have a full sheet of locator tags," she set the stickers in the middle of the table, "one destination library input device," she placed the camera atop the stickers, once again ignoring the post-it note taped to the side, "one cannibalizable psi field generation control chip, and knowledge of the only remaining hard copy of the destination library." She held up her cell-phone. "But first, I've got to make one phone call."

"It's unlikely that you'll be able to establish a line from this locatio--" but she'd already exited to the porch, leaving Sousuke gazing at the inside of the door.

Kurz gave a heavy sigh. "So this is what she's been like?"

Sousuke nodded, and Melissa leaned back in her chair to stare at the ceiling. "Damn. Do you think she'll be able to handle the Whispers coming back?" she asked. "Honestly."

"I am not sure, however I believe under the current circumstances, there are no other options than to let her try." Through the wall, they could hear her talking in light and happy tones to someone, although the words were indistinguishable. "She is considerably improved over her earlier condition. I believe that she has, at the very least come somewhat to terms with the death of her research partner."

"Really? I'm not so sure." Melissa held up the post-it note that had been taped to the camera and read: "' _Kaname, I don't know if you're up to it, but I thought you should at least have pictures if you ever wanted them. The first half of the chip is Yoshi's funeral. The stuff on afterwards is just random from the past few days. Get well soon, XO -Kyoko' _She hasn't looked at them, has she?"

"No," he admitted. He was about to reach for the camera when Kaname returned. She was smiling, but there were fresh tears on her lashes.

"Well, Kyoko's got the only hard copy of the destination library." She set the cell phone down on the table.

"How did you reach her from this location?" Sousuke was not a little concerned that the cell phone might somehow be traceable. Kaname looked at him for a moment as though he'd lost his mind, then shook her head.

"Yoshi made psi-generator chips for Joel's and my cell phones. They are too small to handle matter, but the things they can do with energy like microwaves and non-visible light are pretty amazing," she waved the phone in his face. "The good thing is that it's only a matter of power. If my memories come back, I can build an array, hook this chip up to the ARX-7's lambda driver and we'll be in business," her face fell. "Well, sort of." Her confident mask was slipping and Mao stepped in quickly.

"Okay, so this destination library – we'll need it in order to find Saya?"

Kaname nodded. "Someone just needs to pick it up from Kyoko for us. I'd go myself, but I think I'm going to be pretty busy re-wiring the Arbalest. Of course, if the enemy has Kyoko's cell-phone tapped, then I've just put a giant bullseye on her, but I did warn her to be careful." She sighed. "Realistically, it's just a picture from Joel's camera that I told her to keep for me. The original was destroyed when I blew up the lab. I doubt if the bad guys have even figured out what the destination library is, let alone why Kyoko would have it."

"You want me to fly the Harrier back to Tokyo to pick up the picture for you?" Kurz was quick to volunteer, if only to keep Melissa from doing so. He knew she wasn't up to flying again so soon, but he also knew she'd jump at the chance.

"Would you? Those people made a big mistake capturing Joel. As long as his back is in one piece, alive or dead, I can hunt them down." She began unscrewing the casing from her cell phone. "You see, for non-stationary targets, you have to be able to give Saya very precise visual cues. Most people can't imagine destinations accurately enough to get there, so Yoshi came up with the destination library. I'd visit a location, smack a sticker on it, make it unique somehow and take a picture. Saya would accept the picture as her reference point, and then the picture itself went onto this poster with the destination listed underneath." She pried the case completely off and set it aside. "Only Yoshi started getting really worried about Joel and I being kidnapped, so the three of us decided to put ourselves in the library."

"Your photographs?" Mao was intrigued at the thought that Mr. Vermeer could be a kind of Trojan horse for them.

"Nope. We got tattooed. It's the tattoos that are in the library." She smiled. "We're all targets for Saya. She can find us wherever in the world our tattoos go."

"Gee, Kaname, can we see yours?" Weber leered, and for that Mao did hit him. Kaname smirked, but focused on something inside her cell phone. Sousuke eyed her speculatively.

"Is it possible they may use the same logic to attempt to find you here?"

"Only if they reach Kyoko first," Kaname shuddered at the thought. Sousuke reached out and took her hand.

"We will protect your friends." He squeezed gently, and she smiled at him.

"And I will save Tessa's precious submarine."

---

"The attack was to the number one reactor. Somehow a charge was placed against the primary containment tank." Kalinin was explaining as they made their way to the bridge. Tessa could easily have slept another ten hours, but that was simply not a luxury she could afford.

"Containment?" Her mind was racing, wondering why no order to evacuate had been given.

"This enemy wants the ship. The charge was placed in such a way as to weaken the containment shield, without breaking it."

"Let me guess; engineering flooded the compartment with heavy water as a secondary containment measure, after battening the hatches." It was a contingency that had been considered in drills a time or two, but never taken all that seriously. After all, the type of sabotage necessary to pull this off would require a level of infiltration within engineering that was almost impossible. Tessa's feet squelched through the corridor. The speed of the transfer had obviously resulted in a leak or two. This wasn't too great a concern: better to have to deal with a little secondary flooding than an insufficiently contained core.

"Correct, Madame-Captain." Kalinin could see the anger smoldering in her eyes at the thought of what had been done to her ship. "The good news is that radiation levels beyond the chamber are well below threshold. The crew is safe."

"The bad news is that we are now under battery power, until such time as we can get to drydock." In the past few years, the young captain had refined her vocal range to the point where her focused wrath was quite enough to strip the paint off walls. She was using that tone now. "We're crippled, and we're going to have to resurface every six hours to re-charge the capacitors."

"You should be advised that there are two new contacts which will be coming within sonar range in the next hour." Sugar coating it would not be appreciated. It was lucky that the de Danaan's sensors remained the most advanced on the planet.

"Who?" Her eyes were hidden beneath her bangs, but her footsteps were quick and purposeful. Kalinin was hardly slowing his pace for her.

"H.M.S. Renegade and U.S.N Sea Tiger. From what we can pick up, the Sea Tiger is on border patrol, guarding the off-shore drilling rigs in this area. Renegade is on maneuvers, using some sort of new stealth engine. We barely heard them, and we believe it's unlikely that the Americans are aware of their presence." Tessa's pace never faltered, but something in the set of her shoulders changed.

"Sea Tiger's a good ship. We've played with them before." A hint of speculation colored the previous bitterness. The captain was clearly considering something.

"True. Madigan is still her captain. In addition, MITHRIL intelligence has no records of the Americans or the Brits negotiating with Venserre."

"That doesn't mean they aren't in on this deal. I get the feeling Venserre is trying to broaden their market share." The bitterness was back, but Kalinin could almost feel the strange preoccupation that occurred when the Captain accessed her less-well-known advisors.

They had reached the bridge. Mardukas was sitting in the captain's chair, poring over a large sheaf of papers. A large, plastic mug of coffee was perched on the arm-rest, in the process of being refilled by a thoughtful mate. When he saw the Captain, the XO stood, and Tessa resumed her normal position.

"I have the conn."

"Aye-aye, Ma'am." Mardukas retrieved his coffee mug and took a long sip.

"Mr. Kalinin has been briefing me on the events of the past three hours. Do you have anything to add?"

"I think I've found our guardian angel." He handed her the papers he'd been holding. It appeared to be a ship's registry and manifest.

"Maersk Titania? Is this a container ship?"

"She's one of the new megacontainer ships. She's currently on her way from Korea to Long Beach, fully loaded." There was something in the way he phrased it that made Tessa take a closer look at the manifest. If she was reading it right, the cargo was listed by container and tonnage. There were 3300 entries. Six pages in, she found the section Mardukas had highlighted. "You'll notice she's registered in the Netherlands--"

"And carrying twenty-seven tons of Vrees Mining research equipment, hidden among the rest of her cargo. Insurance value 2.6 million Euros." She looked up to meet his eyes, smiling. "Where is she now?"

Rather than answer, Mardukas pulled up a tactical display on the main viewscreen. The Renegade and the Sea Tiger were clearly marked a good thirteen kilometers west of them, slightly north of their current heading. People's Hidden Strength was emerging from the canyon to the east, only two kilometers behind. And there, one and a half kilometers south-west of the Renegade, was the Maersk Titania.

"Rear propeller array includes three screws. Either side clearance would only give you a two-and-a-half meter margin. She's moving at seventeen knots."

Tessa's eyes were half closed. Her voice was serene. "Hmm. It's fast, but possible. The error margins are acceptable." Returning to herself, she glanced up at her two officers, and smiled brightly. It was a strangely sinister expression. "Well, gentlemen, close to within a thousand meters of the Sea Tiger, and plot me a firing solution. I think it's time to pick a fight." She traced a line on her console, and her officers followed it on the main display. Kalinin nodded and Mardukas gave a grim smile. Orders were relayed, battlestations resumed.

"You realize there is a good possibility of starting a war with this strategy." Mardukas was needling her, but she knew he was enjoying that very thought.

"Oh, the Brits and the Americans will talk it to death before it comes to that. We just have to make sure that the Chinese aren't invited to this particular pissing contest." She watched his _almost_ concealed surprise at her choice of language and smiled inwardly. Not waiting for him to determine a comeback, she stood, removing her jacket to drape it over the chair. "Commander Kalinin, please assign someone trustworthy to guard the inside of the chapel. Given the sabotage, we should assume that our enemy can reach me there if they put their minds to it." There was the tiniest of pauses as all three remembered the incident. "I'd rather not be interrupted," and she grabbed the Kevlar vest stowed beneath the chair.

---

In the darkness of near morning, the field surrounding the silent arm slaves was oddly peaceful. The three professional soldiers were busy at the hangar making final preparations for Kurz's trip to Tokyo, and Kaname has slipped away to try to collect her thoughts. This was easier said than done. She'd taken a more or less comfortable position, leaning against the Arbalest's left "foot". Moonlight glinted on the opposite side of the machine, casting her into shadow. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, arms folded across them, as her head rested on the giant machine. The end of her long, midnight braid traced a silken river across the metal. Her eyes were closed, her features peaceful, but inside, her mind was churning with doubts and uncertainties.

_I'm not a soldier, I'm a college student! That's all I ever wanted to be. That's all I was ever supposed to be! It's completely unfair of Tessa to ask me to get her out of this. She's the one who wanted to be a submarine captain. She's Miss High-and-mighty-of-course-I-can-play-god. Does she have any idea how much danger she's asking me to put her people into? _A shuddering breath escaped her as Kaname remembered her and Yoshi's early experiences with the psi fields. The sight of Yoshi dropping the field only to discover his leg still co-located with the work bench flashed to mind; the way they'd both stared in horror for the split second before the blood started pouring from the limb. She remembered the semi-truck and the sickening, euphoric feeling of integrity loss. _Does Tessa realize the probability that one of the Urzu team will die trying to use this technology? Does she honestly think I can do that to Sousuke?_

Of course, that was the heart of the problem. There was no doubt in Kaname's mind whose help she would have to have to recover Saya. He was the Arbalest's pilot after all. She stretched her legs out and allowed herself to slide until she was lying on the grass, staring up at the monstrous robot above her. From her unique perspective, it seemed a sort of uncaring colossus bestriding the ocean of her own concerns. Hard steel and deadly weapons gave no clue to the fragility of the humans who had to pilot them. She smirked to herself. Then again, "fragile" is not a word anyone would use to describe Sousuke. _Hell, he's a lot stronger than I've been these past few days._ A curious lightness fluttered in her heart as she remembered the strength of his arms around her the night before. She closed her eyes, enjoying the memory, only to watch in horror as the arms became blue, armor-clad in her mind's eye, and the one being held was a young scientist about to breath his last. 49.6 centimeters. What she wouldn't have given for just ten more.

_...80effectiveradiusforthearx-7underbattleconditionsestimatedat14.2meters..._

Her eyes slid shut as her head fell to the right. She didn't notice the rough grass pressing into her cheek or the hardness of metal against her forehead. Instead, she listened to the sighs of calculation, to the murmurs of insight, to the seduction of the Whispers. Her lips moved silently against the green stems, as an unacknowledged tear of relief trickled to the ground._  
_


	11. Chapter 11

a/n: None of my section separation characters seem to be working... my apologies for the confusion. Anyway, this is for RangerH. And many thanks for the technical corrections and advice, to those who have offered them.

**Chapter 11**

_The net result of equal and opposite forces is a velocity vector of zero. Put more clearly: it doesn't matter how much power you throw at the problem; until you agree on a direction, you're going nowhere._

"Range to target: 1500 meters. As of yet, no active sonar contact. It's possible they haven't seen us."

"Deploy dive team to their assigned coordinates. They have 2.6 minutes to attain the position and deploy the torpedo."

"Dive team deployed, count begun."

"Helm, make your heading 009, three degree down bubble, speed 5 knots. Give Renegade our broadside."

"Helm to 009, three degree down bubble, aye." Not that the helmsman was actually making any adjustments to the navigation at this time. The captain had total control of that, however she'd given Mardukas the task of setting the stage and for the moment at least was following his coordination of the situation. They had roughly ten minutes to set things in motion before the Chinese arrived, and Tessa believed in delegating. Mardukas had always appreciated that about his captain.

"Reconfirm location of the Titania." He glanced over at the sonar relay console where Lieutenant Sylva was on the headphones.

"Holding steady on course, speed 17 knots. Our current course will put us perpendicular in three minutes, twelve seconds." Sylva looked nervous. Mardukas allowed himself a bit of private amusement at this. He'd have been nervous himself, were it not for his absolute trust of the Captain's abilities in this arena. The plan was risky in the extreme. First, bait the Sea Tiger with a torpedo fired from a trajectory that would securely frame the Renegade. Meanwhile, the Renegade had to be coaxed to parallel De Danaan's course up under the Titania. A brief sonar contact should make them curious enough to attempt it, and when they had, they'd find themselves on a collision course with an angry Sea Tiger. A very grown up game of chicken would start between two of the world's strongest navies, and De Danaan would disappear into the noise and turbulence of Titania's three massive propellers.

There were several obvious hitches. First, Sea Tiger had to destroy the torpedo. Second, Renegade had to take the course they'd chosen for her. Finally, in order to drive themselves into the protected and hidden space beneath the Titania, De Danaan would have to swim shallow enough to ride over the Renegade, without scraping the container ship or being hammered to pieces by her propellers. On any ordinary sub, it would have been impossible. On the De Danaan on a good day, it would have been decidedly tricky. With port-side propulsion effectively down and power at a premium, the plan balanced precariously in the middle ground of dangerously optimistic.

"Divers report torpedo has been deployed."

"Sensors confirm: torpedo in the water, target has been acquired." Sylva gulped slightly and Mardukas could see sweat on the man's forehead. Had it not been unprofessional, he would have laughed. _If you think this is bad, wait until our Captain takes over..._

As if reading his thoughts, the Captain's icon appeared on the Commander's console. Her computer-generated voice sounded softly from the console.

"Preparations confirmed. Thank you Commander." Strange that he could almost hear her child-like smile in the computerized voice. "Please monitor Sea Tiger, while I play a little tag with Renegade."

#-

Kaname lay back on the grass beneath the Arbalest, utterly exhausted. The fruits of her night's labors could be seen scrawled in wax pen over every metal surface her arms could reach – schematics, instructions, calculations, diagrams all penned in careful characters almost, but never entirely, identical to her own handwriting. She could feel sweat matting her hair and making her stitches itch. She could feel the crawling discomfort of skin gone too long without a bath. She could feel the slight ache in her jaw from talking all night, but the fact that she was finally back in her own body and feeling anything at all was unspeakably refreshing. The Whispers had been more than happy to give her the information and insight she needed, but getting them to stop had been like fighting gravity.

In truth, she wasn't entirely sure how she'd won out at all. She'd been in deep. For the first hours (or at least what felt like hours), she had acquiesced willingly to her other selves and felt herself drawn far into the ocean of reason. By the time she realized how far removed from her body she'd become, it had taken all her effort just to maintain some semblance of self-awareness. So how did I get free? For half a breath, she wondered if Yoshi's ghost had somehow come through for her as his living self always had. Her saner self came down hard on that speculation, however and she decided that opening her eyes and assessing the situation was called for. If only her eyelids weren't so heavy.

"Oh, I have the mother of all headaches," she murmured to herself, throwing an arm over her face.

"Would you care for aspirin?" The familiar voice sounded extremely close. Kaname groaned.

"How long have you been here?"

"Approximately 4.6 hours. I arrived shortly after Mr. Weber got under way. Sergeant Mao returned to the station to rest, and I took it upon myself to watch you." It would almost have sounded sweet, if it hadn't been phrased like something out of a bad episode of Mission Impossible.

"Wait a minute, you've been watching me for five hours?" Kaname felt her cheeks grow warm beneath her arm, and was surprised at how embarrassing the thought of Sousuke watching her work with the Whispers was. "What was I doing?" Dumb question, but for some reason, his perspective was important. Kaname didn't like the powerlessness she felt in the thrall of the Whispers, and was even less fond of the thought that Sousuke had witnessed it.

"You appeared to be transcribing notes pertaining to arm slaves, lambda drivers and what I believe may be psi-field generators onto the armor plating of this arm slave. This continued for approximately four and one half hours, at which point you began demonstrating symptoms of physical distress, ceased writing and attempted to injure yourself." Kaname cringed. It had always been something of a last resort when she felt trapped by the Whispers. Something about trauma tended to dislodge the voices. "I prevented you."

A nuance of his tone caused her to finally move her arm and open her eyes. Looking straight up, she found herself staring at Sousuke's upside-down face. He was sitting in the grass directly behind her head, looking down at her. She wondered how he could be so close without her having realized it, but then again, the Whispers did have a tendency to ruin her perception of her surroundings. She took a closer look at her friend and noticed that he seemed both concerned and somewhat uncomfortable.

"How'd you manage that?" She kept her voice light and curious.

"Uh..." Was Sousuke blushing? What had he done? Had he--? Memories of Yoshi's favorite method of 'rescuing' her from the Whispered state flashed into her mind. Sousuke would never have dared something like that, would he? He'd better not have. A comfortably familiar irritation stirred in the back of her mind even as an unfamiliar wistfulness colored her speculations.

"Sousuke...?" she purred, knowing he'd pick up on the impending threat. Halisen or no, she could be intimidating when she wanted to.

"Well, er..."

"Sousuke!" She let her voice assume the imperative tone that had so terrorized him in high school, but with an undercurrent of amusement. She wasn't the blushing and sensitive girl she'd been, and she was too exhausted to prevent herself from finding the ordinarily stoic sergeant's discomfiture entertaining.

"I temporarily immobilized your jaw. You seem unable to maintain a Whispered state when silent, and I reasoned this course of action would affect a more acceptable solution than your attempt to aggravate your head injury." He wasn't looking at her as he answered, instead staring straight ahead in what Kaname had come to regard as his "reporting" posture. Immobilized, huh? She decided not to press. Later she might have the energy to properly misconstrue and take offense, but for the moment fatigue was winning out.

"Right," she commented, with just enough knowing to keep her friend on his toes. Then she sat up. "So can you read what I wrote?" Her head spun a little at the minute change in altitude and she paused to avoid admitting to it. Sousuke moved ever so slightly to place his chest and shoulder at her disposal and she leaned against him, surprised at his tact.

"Your handwriting is for the most part legible, although some of your instructions are beyond my capacity to execute. I'm afraid my knowledge of engineering extends only as far as rudimentary field repairs." They stared together at the complicated diagram of circuitry on the Arm Slave's left shin plate. "I believe the Sergeant Major's expertise may be more helpful in this regard, however. She has a surprising aptitude for jury-rigging, as we discovered last month in Libya. We were pinned down under fire in a highly sandy location..." he began the story somewhat hesitantly, but when the usual sharp reprimand for discussing anything military was not forthcoming he proceeded to share the entire tale (or at least as much of it as would not compromise his oaths of secrecy), highlighting his comrade's ingenuity.

As usual, he found himself enthralled by memories of the event and it only occurred to him as he was ending his recount that Kaname had been unusually tolerant in her listening. When he shifted slightly and her head fell limply against his neck, reality provided the explanation. He picked her up carefully – there was no sense denying her a little rest – and headed back to the post. As he walked, the realization that he was looking forward to her exasperation slipped into his thoughts and he held her a little more tightly.

#-

She met him at the door with a can of pepper spray and a camera, the latter snapping several pictures before he had a chance to cross the threshold. The cheerfully smiling young woman was attired like a seasoned CNN war correspondent, helmet, film vest and all; her apartment in a state of fortified disorder that suggested an interesting couple of days. Mao's instructions that Kurz bring back both the picture and the girl made a lot of sense, if this was the situation.

"It's really you!" She seemed surprised, and Kurz had to think for a moment to remember when they'd actually met before. At least she seemed less likely to spray him. That stuff hurt and he really didn't want to have to explain to Mao that he'd been taken out by a civilian with personal safety aids.

"Yeah. Been a while since the karaoke bar, Miss Tokiwa." She had really turned into a rather attractive young lady, he thought, before taking another look around the apartment. It was the sort of single room affair common to college students in Tokyo, one side lined with wall to wall closets, a sink, single burner stove and minuscule refrigerator serving as kitchen and the third wall filled with desk, window and bookshelves. At present, it looked as though most of the furniture had been moved back recently, and drag marks on the floor suggested she'd been spending most of her time with everything crammed against the door.

"Please call me Kyoko – you're one of Kaname's friends, after all," she commented, opening the refrigerator. "Would you like a drink? You look kinda tired."

"Thanks," he replied, accepting a can of tea. "So, looks like you've had company." For a moment she seemed a little confused by this, but then she smiled.

"Oh, not really. It's just that someone searched Kaname's, Yoshi's and Joel's apartments, and somebody's been following me around the campus lately. So I thought, better safe than sorry, you know?" He nodded and she pulled a key out of the freezer before grabbing a multi-tool from one of her vest pockets and prying at a floor board. "That and Kaname said this thing I'm supposed to give you is pretty important, and I sure didn't want to lose it before I could give it to you." The board was removed to reveal a rather no-nonsense floor safe. Kyoko hid the combination dial with one hand as she opened it with the other, then pulled the steel door open and reached in to withdraw a plastic photo envelope. "Oh, but I did take it to the photo lab and blew up the thing she wanted a better look at." She opened the envelope to show him an enlarged photograph of the blue-haired girl hugging a dark-haired young man in a lab coat. "How is Kaname, anyway? Is she feeling better? I know Sousuke said he was going to take care of her, but..."

"She seems a lot better. I think she'll probably be coming back to school soon." Kurz put on a charming nothing-further-to-tell smile, but Kyoko was clearly going to be one hell of a reporter. She saw right through it.

"Is she still in danger? 'Cause I mean, lawyers for Yoshi's grant sponsors have been looking for her, not to mention his family lawyer and then there's the guys with the guns. I don't know if she _should_ come back here any time soon." She was still holding the envelope. "Whatever Yoshi was working on was pretty big stuff, and it's kinda strange you and Sousuke showing up out of nowhere after all this time. You want to tell me what's really going on?"

"Yeah, well about that, the less you know the better, probably." She smiled at him because it was more polite than laughing, and Kurz realized Kyoko Tokiwa was born to her chosen profession. "There's really not much I _can_ tell you?" he tried, smirking. She continued smiling politely. He laughed. Oh well. It wasn't like he'd been ordered to be cagey, and evasive was more Sousuke's thing anyway. "Look, Kaname's safe for now, and the sooner I get that picture to her, the safer she'll be. Other than that, you can ask her when you see her." Kyoko stared at him a moment, and Kurz wondered how much convincing it was going to take. In his experience, getting a reporter's curiosity was enough to make her follow you anywhere, but Kyoko was still pretty young. Then she nodded.

"That's okay, then. So I'm coming with you?" She pulled what looked to be a packed overnight bag from the floor beside the desk, then began assembling a group of several more small, nylon packs. At Kurz's raised eyebrow, she explained. "Well, I've got to take at least a couple cameras..."

"Well, I don't know," he hedged, inwardly amused at the way Kyoko's look became earnest and determined at the thought of being excluded. "I'm not inviting you on a journalism field-trip." He thought of something and grinned. "Of course, you can take all the pictures of me you want, but as for the rest... there _is_ some pretty serious stuff going on."

"I knew it! I knew there was more to this than just old high school friends. Who do you guys work for? You and Sousuke do work together, right?" She'd produced a notebook seemingly from thin air and was fishing for a pencil in one of her vest pockets. Kurz laughed.

"You don't give up!"

"Oh, I don't mean to be pushy." She pulled off a demure look well enough that he had to respect her acting abilities. "Still, it would be a great scoop if I could prove some sort of global conspiracy – especially since my friend's involved in it. But really, I just want to help. It's tough knowing she's in trouble and not being able to do anything about it, you know?" She looked at him thoughtfully.

"Look, this has to stay completely off the record. No pictures or story or anything."

"Not even just some holiday photos? I mean, if I only took my camera phone..." Kyoko did puppy eyes pretty well too. He considered it for a moment. Her hobby would probably keep her calmer through the trip and anything else that might happen, but mailing the pictures to herself...

"No phone. But I'll buy you a disposable at the airport, okay?" It would be easy enough to steal or destroy later. She seemed appeased by this, however. He gestured to her overnight bag. "You got a swimsuit in there?"

"Yeah..." but she looked a little confused. _Good_. Couldn't have the reporter thinking she knew all the details.

"Then let's go."

#-

They had narrowly avoided the Chinese sub's sensor range. Whether it was coincidence or careful planning that had staged the fight just beyond that radius, Mardukas could only guess. He glanced again at the tactical display, noticing the way Sea Tiger had stopped dead in an attempt to get better readings on her possible aggressors. Renegade, meanwhile, had clearly gotten at least one good read on De Danaan and was attempting to pursue. Beneath his feet, the deck lurched, port side ballast tanks emptying twenty thousand gallons of seawater back into the surrounding ocean. Starboard wasn't matching.

"Bridge to the Captain: is the current state of the starboard ballast tanks intentional?" The only problem with having someone run the ship's systems from the Chapel was that occasionally she forgot to keep the bridge sufficiently informed of her improvisations. The answer flashed across the chair console, and he could almost imagine the apologetic smile that would have accompanied it in person.

It made sense that she was attempting to minimize their horizontal profile – De Danaan was considerably broader than the average submarine, and a couple meters of leeway between the submarine's sides and the Titania's middle and starboard screws amounted to nothing at all in this current. For all it's complete lack of weapons, the mega container ship still had the best chance of destroying them in this scenario. Her massive propellers would tear through the De Danaan's hull like tissue paper, given half a chance. The captain was clearly aware of that.

The starboard tanks began to evacuate at that point, driving the sub towards the surface at an awkward angle. Renegade was approaching at the pace of a vehicle unaware of how close she was coming to a catastrophe – probably at least 10 knots - and on the bridge, those with a view of the tactical display were unconsciously leaning ever so slightly to port. Mardukas would have been amused, except that he found himself doing the same and concentrating on the barely perceptible change in vibration that signaled their own acceleration. He trusted the Captain implicitly, but twenty-eight years of experience had taught him that the only constant at sea was that things could and did go wrong.

Beneath his feet, the deck plating began to shake. He checked unobtrusively to make sure his own seatbelt was secure, and noted that the bridge crew was likewise restrained. Eerie moaning noises echoed through the ship as swirling water pounded the hull in time to the rotation of the ever-closer propellers. He hoped the equipment in the hangar bay would not come loose.

Just then, a loud ping resounded through the cabin.

"Lt. Sylva, how are our British friends doing?" The now considerable shuddering of the deck made his voice less clear than Mardukas cared for, but Sylva had good ears.

"Renegade is still moving on her prior course and speed. But Sea Tiger--" Mardukas smiled, noting the same thing on his tactical display.

"Well, she wanted a target. Nice of the Brits to volunteer." Seconds after the ping had sounded, the Sea Tiger had flooded her forward torpedo tubes and was turning to bring the Renegade into her sites. Mardukas could almost imagine the angry messages being prepared for naval authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. It would have been amusing, were it not for the frantic pressure and turbulence warnings popping up in the engineering portion of the display. "Have either of them noticed us?"

"No indications of that sir," another ping sounded, "although I think the Renegade may not be entirely convinced."

"Bridge to the Captain: estimate thirty seconds before the Renegade confirms two contacts – recommend increasing our speed."

There was no answer on the display, but he felt a slight increase in acceleration and the rattles and screams of tortured hull plating rose in intensity. At the helm, the helmsman went pale as their speed rose to 17 knots, mirroring the Titania. All around, crewmen were holding their breath and praying that their officers knew what they were doing.

A muffled boom echoed from somewhere in the ship.

"Operations to the bridge: minor overpressure on the hull in the main hangar."

"Status?" Even through the noise of the ship's progress, he could hear rushing water over the line.

"The starboard bay door seal can't take the stress. We're taking on water, but it's under control for now. The rest of the seal may be weakening, though."

"Understood. Shore it up however you can: evacuating the hangar is not an option at this time." It was rather harsh, but if the hangar did flood, the change in buoyancy for the ship would effectively destroy their one chance at safety. De Danaan could not afford to drop back out of Titania's shadow, so Mardukas could not afford to be careful with the crew. However. "Bridge to Lt. Commander Kalinin: report to the main hangar. All SRT personnel to assist in damage control."

"Kalinin here, understood." Mardukas didn't bother to acknowledge. Kalinin knew what he was doing, and did not need further instructions. There were very few things the man could not do. It was nice to work with competent colleagues... he just hoped the term of service would last a while.

#-

It hurt. It felt like swimming up stream – if the stream were Niagara Falls. She could feel the water pressure on her skin, the deadly closeness of whirling blades. And she felt weak, so weak – half dead in fact, with her left side almost numb. The water beat her away, away, and she'd never been good at swimming and she'd never been strong in the first place, and the usual feelings of freedom and power wouldn't come in this torrent of buffeting force.

_Weak. Weak. I'm going to stumble. I'm going to lose them... NO! I can't stop: I've got to do this. We've got to get to safety, but the pain. I'm not an athlete. The PAIN. I'm not a fighter... _She gasped, shoving that line of thought aside. _Failure is NOT an option. I will do this. I will do this. _She felt the propellers churning at her sides, achingly close.

_But I'm just so tired... _And fatigue was closing in around her, narrowing her vision. Her mind's connection to the ship was wavering as the ship's stress met her own exhaustion._ Just a little more. I just need a little more. If I just hold on a little more – if I only had a little more strength... _She reached, without realizing it, grabbed at something and suddenly felt the flow of energy wash over her.

_Tessa?_

_Kaname? _ The ghostly figure fell into her own, and the girls and the ship strained together against the current. _Swimming_... They strove for the calm beneath the ship. _Twisting_... They clung to the margin of safety between the screws. _Reaching_... They forced energy from the ship through sheer force of will until suddenly,

_WE MADE IT! _ For a moment, all identities merged in the rush of victory, even as the sensation of calmly flowing waters stroked their sides. Then two ghostly shadows faced each other across the sea, and only one looked vaguely like her ship.

_I made it too. _ Kaname smiled. _So hang in there, okay?_

_Of course. _They shared a look of equal parts determination and challenge... and perhaps a little friendship. Then the connection ended and Tessa sank back in her chair.

_Commander Mardukas, please attach grappling anchors and deploy the operations team to secure the Titania. Tell them to be polite, but it would be very inconvenient if anyone contacted their home company right now. _ She let her thoughts scroll soundlessly into the message screen. _It's time Venserre got to deal with the tough choices._


End file.
